And the Gunslinger Followed
by The Tesseract Seraph
Summary: [Xenosaga x Dark Tower] The world of Shion and Junior, KOSMOS and MOMO is only one of uncountable billions cut from the same cloth. And the spindle's fracturing. Can they save it? [updated, plz no more death threats]
1. Prologue

**Author's Note:** Well, here it is--the Xenosaga/Dark Tower crossover I promised. While I'm trying my hardest to emulate the horror stylings of the wonderful Stephen King, I'm not nearly as good; nor do I own even a millionth share in the _Dark Tower_ saga beyond being a very avid fan of Roland's adventures. Similarly, my ownership of _Xenosaga_ is limited merely to my love of the game. Even so, let's see what I can make of a meshing of the two. My own contribution to the song of the Turtle, cry of the Bear (or perhaps song of the Phoenix, cry of the Dragon).  
  
**Warnings:** Spoilers for both series, including the Dark Tower, book seven, and Xenosaga Episode II. Violence and graphic horror, some language.  
  
White over red; thus is the will of Gan, forever and ever.

* * *

**Prologue**  
_Somewhere in the Can'-Ka No Rey_  
  
It is vast.  
  
To say that is to do the Tower a great irreverence, bordering on sacrilege, but nevertheless: It is vast.  
  
A black-clad monolith stretching to the skies of all existence, surrounded by a field of blood (_or roses_) on all sides, a veritable Aceldama of crimson flowers waving in an unfelt breeze or twisting beneath the influence of the Beams that support the Dark Tower and with it all existence. Men have died trying to reach the Tower. Many more have met their ends before even having an inkling that they were to begin a journey to this foundation of all creation. Drops of blood as innumerable as the rose petals strewn at the Tower's base have been shed, all for a glimpse of it, a single glimpse.  
  
And why not? What more worthy goal could there be than this Tower? It is the spindle upon which all reality's been spun as thread, world after world after world woven through its infinite floors and wound around its base. World after world after world has been flung up on the _Prim_ from this central point, like a web knit by a vast black spider. And should the spider die...  
  
Catastrophe will follow, the sparkling net of worlds shattering apart like a beaded necklace snapped by a careless child. Even now the Beams that form the world's foundation have begun to falter and fail, those last legacies of the Old Ones who, in their hubris, thought they could make the world better through their technology. Each snapping Beam brings with it devastation and ruin, worlds destroyed and worlds flung away from their center to wither away in the dark. The Crimson King, enemy of all existence, has set his pets, the Breakers, on those Beams, hastening their erosion.  
  
And even through all this, one gunslinger--one knight of In-World, the last legacy of Gilead, the last king from the line of Arthur Eld--forges on, bound by _ka_ to those who may help save or lose the Tower and all the worlds with it.  
But they are not the only ones who have a say in it. Worlds washed up further from center, spun farther out in the _Prim_ than In-World and even the world we call our own, there are other gunslingers and other _ka-tet_, racing to save their own worlds before the Tower crumbles at last.  
  
After all, you didn't think that Roland would be the only one to have a say in this, did you?  
  


---

  
  
Here:  
  
Three men or angels from one of these very worlds stand ankle-deep in roses (_or blood_) at the base of the Tower. Two of them have been playing this game of kings and worlds and lives for a very long time; the third is simply a pawn, but one tied more intimately to his world than even the two angels will admit. He is blindfolded, gagged, hands bound behind him as he stands, face turned toward the Tower. Silent tears stream down his face from eyes blinded and tight-shut against the beauty around him, for he knows well that he's already trapped within the web of this particular spider and can bear it no longer.  
  
"This is cruel," one of the angels murmurs. "He has such a small role in these things. Hasn't he suffered enough?"  
  
The other smiles distantly, an ineffable twitch of the lips that conveys a humor at the worlds' greatest joke. "His role is small, yes, but a pivotal one--one he will need to be adequately prepared to play. Some cruelties are--regrettably--necessary in this game. You know that."  
  
A faint twitch of the first angel's wings, a breathy sigh. "Still--it doesn't seem right--" A muffled sob cuts him off and he looks over at their captive, reaching with a gloved hand to touch his shoulder gently. The angel can read the tension just beneath the man's skin, the agony that's warped his spirit, mind, and life. His frown deepens. "--This is enough. No more."  
  
The other's little smile widens slightly. "If you say so," he says, voice gentle and smooth. "It is enough." He, too, rests a hand on their captive's shoulder, feeling the pain but not even batting an eye at it. (Angels, after all, have to kill women and children, raze whole cities to the ground, and destroy worlds, all on God's command.) "We will go.  
  
"But you know you can't protect them forever, Joshua. Not him--not the girl--and not her. When the time comes, they will all play out their roles as predicted, and you will be unable to save them."  
  
And to that, the first angel is silent. 


	2. The Gunslinger

**Chapter 1: The Gunslinger**  
_Aboard the Foundation cruiser _Durandal

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed," Junior murmured to himself.

"The desert was the apotheosis of all deserts, huge, standing to the sky for what looked like an eternity in all directions. --Mary, how long has it been since the last positive contact?"

His second-in-command looked up from her console, beaming with the usual effusive cheer she showed the world. "Less than five seconds, Little Master. Looks like he's about to come out of column space!"

Despite Mary's cheer, the words did nothing to lessen Junior's feeling of anxiety. After all, he didn't really want to confront his quarry--after all, even after the gunslinger caught the man in black, things had only gotten worse. But he was very, very good at pretending. He smiled a strained smile. "Good. Thanks, Mary. Everyone, keep on alert--it's only one mech, but it'll be dangerous."

A soft chorus of acknowledgment drifted up from the bridge crew. Even if they didn't know exactly what it was they were tracking, they were ready for anything. _Of course, _Junior thought sourly_, that bastard doesn't quite fall under the "everything" column of things people prepare for._

He folded his arms across his chest uncomfortably, glancing to his left. Shelley caught his eye from her workstation, and arched one purple brow in silent query. _Are you all right?_ Even if Junior didn't have Gaignun's telepathic talent, he could read the thought in her eyes. He shrugged. _I'm as right as I'll ever be._ It still wasn't quite how he felt, but he needed to keep their spirits up. The sisters were the only people on the bridge, besides Junior himself, who knew exactly what the Durandal was chasing today--and even they didn't quite grasp the depth of it. There was no reason to frighten them if they wouldn't understand anyway.

"Contact! We've got a contact--fifteen degrees and two klicks off the starboard bow!" one of the Chibans called from her post. Her conspecifics immediately went into action, their hands flying over their holoconsoles. One of them brought up a holographic projection on the forward screen, focusing one of the Durandal's bow cameras on the little patch of space her sister had identified. It appeared empty--unless you knew how to look for the shimmer of an impending gate in.

"We have gate in! Craft type unknown, but these mass readings aren't any larger than a small fighter!" another Chiban called. Junior's blood ran chill.

"You have the exact dimensions on that?" he called back to her, hoping beyond hope that they'd been wrong--even if it meant he'd taken the Durandal away from the Foundation for a two-week wild goose chase.

"Just coming in now!" The shimmer on the projection was growing more insistent, blocking out the stars behind it in a sunburst of amber and green light. "Mass readings are--this is crazy, Little Master! There's no way anything that small should be able to get into column space!"

Yep, that was it. The cold spot in Junior's stomach contracted into a lump of ice. Shelley looked over at him again, worry in her normally impassive eyes, before returning to monitoring her board. "It matches," she confirmed after a moment, tone perfectly level. "Mass and energy readouts are identical, plus-minus zero point zero two percent, to that of the Simeon."

"Dammit," Junior swore under his breath. Louder, he added: "Don't worry about it. Just get ready for it to come out fighting."

"Aye aye, sir!"

The shimmer on the forward screen resolved in an eye-hurting burst of light. Junior squinted, watching and praying. As it died down, the familiar shape he'd been hoping for (fearing) drifted, outlined against the distant stars.

Simeon, the winged jackal of the cosmos.

It didn't hold still long, only a fraction of a second. Its pilot had to have known they were tracking him through the column, measuring the pulses his craft sent out as it traversed warp space. He had to have known his trail was all too obvious, and there would be an ambush waiting. He didn't disappoint. The edges of Simeon's wings flared blue, before it _moved_, streaking "up" and out of the Durandal's line of sight. "Track that!" Junior snapped, on instinct alone. _I can't let the bastard get out of sight!_

That didn't seem to be the pilot's intent, though. Just as one of the Chibans managed to get another camera focused on the moving Simeon, it hit the top of its arc, flipping around to face back at the Durandal. The jackal-like head tilted slightly to one side, as if regarding the Kukai flagship from this greater "height". It was not something Junior enjoyed--it reminded him far too much of Simeon's pilot. "Get a lock on it," he growled. "I want all photon torpedo tubes ready to fire and blow it out of the sky."

"Aye, sir!" "Photon torpedos armed!" "Tracking the unknown mech--target lock acquired!"

_Come on, you bastard. What are you waiting for? _"On my mark."

"Sir! The unknown craft is hailing us!"

"--Put it on-screen," Junior said, grudgingly, and braced himself.

"Why, Rubedo. How nice of you to come visit me! I was wondering if you were going to stick around Second Miltia. Getting bored? Feeling a little wanderlust?" It was Albedo's voice, rasping and mocking, that put Junior on edge immediately--moreso than his damnably self-assured smile, moreso than the _look_ in his eyes. Junior tried to bite his tongue, but couldn't--just couldn't keep back the acid bile that clawed its way up his throat.

"Yeah, no thanks to you, you bastard," he snarled. "I don't know what the hell you think you're doin' out here, but this is the end of the line, Albedo. --Mark."

The Chibans on weapons didn't have to be told twice. "Mark!" "Mark, sir!" "Photon torpedos away!"

Lines of azure light cut across Durandal's forward screen, all of them tracking toward the Simeon. It was overkill; Junior knew it was overkill, and so did everyone on the bridge. It didn't soothe his heart any when most of the torpedos appeared to collide with Simeon, detonating in an eye-searing flash of blue-white light. Junior bit his lower lip and watched the forward screen through it all, as the flash died down, as he waited for the stab of agony through his own chest that would tell him they'd at least hurt the bastard.

No such luck. That _laugh_, that rasping, forced giggle that cut across his nerves like a hot knife blared out of the comm system a moment later. "An _ambush_, Rubedo? Oh, come on--you can't tell me you really thought you could pull that off." Simeon, still drifting above the _Durandal_, waggled its wings tauntingly. "You've really been losing your touch--the years just haven't been kind, have they?"

"Cycle the photon torpedo tubes," Junior forced through grit teeth, turning to stride stiffly back to his command console. "I want them ready to fire again in thirty seconds. _Now!_" he snapped at a Chiban who seemed just a little too slow at her duty. She cringed.

Behind his back, Junior could almost feel Mary and Shelley exchanging glances. Once more, he hardly needed his telepathy to know what they were thinking--Albedo managed to bring out the worst in him. _Yeah, well,_ he thought bitterly to himself. _Maybe because he _is _the worst in me._ He rested his hands on the console, resting his weight on the much-needed support. After a moment, he raised his head, staring up into his brother's mad eyes across the depths of space and an open comm channel. "Yeah," he replied, with forced humor. _Don't let him get to you,_ Gaignun's remembered voice slid through the back of his thoughts. _Not like last time._

"Yeah, it's a wonder I'm not as gray as you are, little brother, from all the _stress _ you've been puttin' us through. So how about you just shut up and get your ass killed, huh?" Junior's hands curled on the console, his blue eyes brightening as a little surge of savage glee trickled through his system. Let Albedo get the best of him? Oh no, he thought, establishing his link to the _Durandal_. Not letting him get the best of _anything_... "Torpedos?" he muttered.

"Fifteen more seconds, sir."

"Good."

Albedo cut across the muttered conversation: "Now, _now, _Rubedo! We've already HAD this discussion! Death's such a pitiful thing to threaten me with. Besides," his voice turned congenial, almost wheedling, "I wasn't expecting you to bring all your friends again!"

"Ten seconds, sir."

Junior closed his eyes.

"I just wanted to talk with you. _Alone._ Brother. To. Brother. Is that so much to ask?"

"Eight seconds." "Seven." "Six."

"But I imagine I can entertain ALL of you, if you insist on having so many guests!"

"Sir, the mech is moving!" "Five seconds, sir."

Junior kept his eyes closed, focusing--reaching out toward that tainted white light he could see in his mind's eye. _Hello, little brother,_ he thought, knowing Albedo wouldn't be listening. _You just keep playing your games and give me time to get a lock on you._

"Four." "Three." "Two--"

The _Durandal_ shuddered from a sudden explosion. Junior twitched, feeling the damage through his link to his ship--it was like getting stabbed in the side. Simeon must have attacked with its beam saber; a taunting move if ever there were one. "--Sir, we just lost three of the port torpedo tubes!" "One, sir! Remaining torpedo tubes are cycled and armed!"

"Tag!" Albedo crowed. "You're _it._"

Another minor explosion caused the _Durandal _to tremble. A little more of the ship died in searing contrails of pain. Junior's eyes snapped open, glowing blue. "Weapons, _gimme controls right now, dammit!_" he snarled.

"Fire control is yours, sir!"

_Fire! _Junior/_Durandal_ thought gleefully, opening up with the remaining photon torpedos and all the laser batteries on the little GNAT that was annoying them. Simeon may have been much smaller and faster than _Durandal_, but with its captain linked to it, plotting targeting solutions at the speed of thought and lending his power to it, the big cruiser had more than a fighting chance against the tiny ES. _Oh, no. You got in over your head this time, little brother._

"Two hits--three hits confirmed on the target; it's been knocked off course! Good shooting, sir!" Junior's faint smile stretched into a savage grin. Apparently, he'd gotten Simeon's radio antenna, too, from the squelch of static that finally killed that damn GIGGLE.

"Oh, you ain't seen nothing yet. Keep the weapons hot, boys and girls, and launch the AGWS--we're going to be having a--ah--AAAaagh!" "Little Master!"

The link to the _Durandal _dissolved into so much psychic static as something slimy reached out and put its hands on Junior's mind. He crumpled to his knees, grabbing his head between his hands. Even as his vision fuzzed in and out of focus, he could see Mary and Shelley running to his aid. But they seemed so distant--

Well well. Aren't we getting clever, Rubedo. I'm actually impressed--you're finally living up to your birthright. Albedo's self-assured purr was even worse inside the chambers of Junior's skull, even as the madman began forcing his control on his older brother. The world began to drain down to a sickly white; Mary and Shelley were inaudible manikins trying in vain to get his attention as he slumped all the way to the floor.

But I'm afraid you've still got a long ways to go. Especially since you're too much of a coward to face me on my own terms. Maybe I should just end it all here--what do you think? Fourteen years is a long time to wait for someone to grow a spine... Now it was as if Junior was snowblind, trapped in the middle of a blizzard with only that voice for company. He kicked against Albedo's all-consuming presence, and reached out vainly toward his link with Gaignun.

_Gaignun! GAIGNUN! HELP ME! HELP M--mmgfhg! _The link was muffled down to nothing with the sensation of a hand being laid across his mouth, stifling. Now Junior found he could move again, struggling to get his bearings in this white plane of nothing even as he kicked violently at the presence that held him captive.

The white nothingness around him rippled in response to his struggling, like a bubble being expanded from the inside. That bubble popped, dumping him into blackness filled with familiar wicked laughter. Junior found the hand across his mouth to be quite real--along with Albedo's hot breath against his cheek as the madman leaned down to whisper in his ear: "No need to invite him into this. It's between us, Rubedo. Just you--and me--alone."

Just what Junior had been fearing. He bit the fingers pressed against his teeth, jerking upward and lashing out with his own fire-red strands of power against the brother who held him and the blackness around him. Albedo's grip slackened just long enough for Junior to win partially free. "Let _go_ of me, you bastard!" he shrieked, writhing like a snake. "Let GO! Let me OUT OF HERE!"

"Ah-ah-ah," Albedo said with malicious glee, winding his fingers around his brother's wrists and holding them still. "Not until we've  
(_pulse_)  
The blackness breathed in, waiting. Time froze. It felt to Junior like that moment he unleashed his powers on the Song of Nephilim to throw Albedo back, away from them, only this wasn't his doing. Wasn't, because he felt frozen too, only his mind was racing and  
(_pulse_)  
a memory came back to him. Holding hands with MOMO on the steps of the UMN Headquarters on Second Miltia. Those gold eyes were bright with unshed tears, but Junior--hating to see women cry--had steeled himself against this parting for weeks. It still didn't help. "It's all right, MOMO," he said to her. "We'll meet up again sometime soon. Ziggy'll take care of you, and your mom's here--it's going to be okay."

"J-Junior," she stammered. "I just--I'm going to miss you. I want you to stay here with me." Her voice lowered, the tears overspilling her eyelids. "I'm afraid."

He swallowed hard, pressing her hands between his--pressing the good-luck charm he'd scooped up off the decking of the Song between them. His link to her. He didn't want to listen to the little voice adding "last" to that. "Don't be, MOMO," he said with a cheer he didn't feel. "It'll only be a couple of weeks, and I'll be back! They'll take good care of you here. I promise."

Gently, he reached up, cupping her chin in his hands and stroking those tears away with his thumbs. She looked so much like Sakura... "I promise," he repeated, softly. "Okay?"

She sniffed, swallowed hard--and at last nodded, raising her eyes to look him in the face. Then she moved with an unexpected speed, wrapping her arms around him in a tight hug. He stood stunned a moment--before embracing her back, bowing his head and swallowing his own tears.

After a moment, he raised his eyes, catching the gaze of chaos, standing behind MOMO. His friend's expression was the most accusing Junior had ever seen it--faintly, very faintly, but there. And it worried Junior on some level he couldn't even name. What reason did the youth have to be so upset at him? He let MOMO go, giving her another forced smile. "Take care of yourself, okay?" he told her.

Then he let her go, stepping away toward chaos. Felt her turn around behind him, to say: "Take care, Junior," to his back. But even then he opened his mouth, to ask chaos what was wrong, only to be met with a shake of that silver head.

Don't do this, Junior, he read in those eyes. Don't do this.

Why not?  
(_pulse_)  
Because he was holding Albedo by the wrist on Miltia again, staring  
(_down?_)  
into those tear-stained purple eyes as his twin clung to him. "Don't let me go," he begged. "Don't let go, Rubedo. Please, don't let me go."

Rubedo looked up, away from those painfully bright eyes. There, across the Abyss--his objective. He couldn't see it. Didn't know what it was--knew only that whatever-it-was drove him onward. Not fear this time, but something else. He had to reach the other side of the Abyss. Had to catch that thing that was fleeing him. Had to know.

He looked down. "Albedo, I'm..."

The link between them caught the unsaid words, the unsaid intentions, and let them flow through before Rubedo had any time to shield. Albedo's eyes widened, his grip on his brother's wrist tightening. After a long moment--held there only by the strength of Rubedo's hands, suspended over that all-devouring Abyss--he nodded once.

"Go, then."

(_who said that?_)

"There are other worlds than these."

He let go. They both let go, an agreement between two halves of the same whole, the last agreement they'd make. Albedo fell  
(_pulse_)  
that shrieking laugh cut through the darkness once more, this time with an overtone of terrible agony to it. Like someone was being tortured. Junior's tongue felt thick in his mouth, and dry as dust. He kicked feebly against Albedo again, and found himself dropped flat on his face.

"Come commala-come--come-commala-come-ten--come, o come, thou king of kings! Come, gunslinger, we deal in lead, though the days be many--and truths be many, many--delah, say true, say thankee sai and charyou tree, life for YOU, death for me, death for my crops--" The babble could only be Albedo; he was the only other person here. Junior spit, pushing himself up and cracking his eyes to look for his mad brother. Wouldn't be hard to find, with all the racket he was making.

"--ka, that wicked bitch, _how I hate it_, ka like a wheel, rolling, rolling, and the world moves on--the worlds move on, time is a face on the water, and not only they move on. The spiders were RED, do you understand me? Their bellies were filled with_ red _spiders!" Where the hell was he? Junior rolled over

(_PULSE_)

Albedo's babbling warped into a high-pitched shriek, one that Junior echoed but a breath later as his twin's pain caught him right through his chest. _Oh, God. Oh God, forgive me. I'm going to die._

And then the world exploded.

---

Thirty seconds after he collapsed, Junior shrieked in agony. Mary jumped, almost falling over from startlement. "Little Master?!" she cried. "Are you all right?"

Shelley bent down where her sister had been, lowering her head nearly to the deckplates. Junior was deathly still now, curled up in a fetal ball. "He's still breathing," she pronounced after a moment. She shifted to a kneeling posture, resting her hands on her thighs and looking up at her blonde sister. "Open a channel to the Kaiser. He needs to know about this now."

Mary nodded numbly, turning to go do just that.

_That won't be necessary._ Gaignun Kukai's voice cut across their minds, bringing even Shelley to attention. All the Chibans on the bridge turned as one (a sight so ridiculous that Mary might have laughed, if her captain--her friend--weren't lying half-dead on the floor), golden eyes huge with surprise. Truly, Master Kukai had more tricks to him than any had guessed.

_I'm already here. Whatever's happened--_

He was cut off as the _Durandal_ suddenly shook, joints groaning, metal screeching on metal fit to be torn apart. Mary staggered, fell. The shaking seemed to stretch on for ages, torturous and terrifying. Alarms shrieked to life as the cataclysmic tremor tore open bulkheads and spilled unfortunate crewers out into space on the ship's lower levels.

One by one, the holographic lights of the bridge consoles winked out. Then the ambient lighting, leaving the _Durandal_ to continue shuddering in darkness, her frightened crew sprawled on the decks and praying the ship didn't shake herself apart.

Then everything stopped as quickly as it had begun. For a long moment, everything was silent--except for the occasional tick and ping of falling sparks. At long last, Mary pushed herself up. Someone's whimpering--who was it?--cut through the metallic sounds of the great warship settling. She cleared her throat, nervously, and whispered, "Status report?"

No one answered for several moments. But, at long last, a Chiban's voice rang out of the dark: "Sensors ninety percent disabled. Weapons offline. Generators--generators offline. Engines offline. Hull breaches in sections 37, 41, 42, 65, 89, 91, 92, 93..." She paused, and swallowed. "Casualties--none confirmed, estimated already in the hundreds." Mary heard her shift. "--Were we attacked?"

"No," another voice spoke up. Shelley. The purple-haired woman got to her feet in the dark, turning her eyes toward the stars. Outlined against them was Simeon, now deathly still and drifting in space. "No. Fifteen seconds before the disturbance, the enemy mech ceased its assault against us. Whatever caused it--it wasn't him."

_No, it wasn't. I'm assuming you just felt that, too._

"Yes, Master Kukai," Shelley replied aloud. Mary merely nodded dumbly.

_Take Simeon under tow. Whatever happened, Albedo had a part in it. We're going to find out what._ Shelley noted, analytically, that there was strain behind Gaignun's beloved voice, and frowned there in the darkness. If the Kaiser were showing strain--it didn't bear thinking about.

"Of course. You heard the Master's orders--bring the generators back up and take the mech under tow. We're returning to the Foundation."

Shelley didn't want to think about how long it would take to limp back to Second Miltia in this condition.

---

_Aboard the _Elsa von Brarant

"Tony, ya moron! What the hell did you just run us into?!"

Captain Matthews's anger lashed through the tense air of the _Elsa's _bridge. chaos winced faintly, still recovering his balance from the wave of forc that had struck the ship. It had left a sick, cold chill in his stomach--more than if they'd just taken asteroid damage. Something was wrong.

"Nothing, captain--it's--I wasn't even doing anything, and BAM, we hit something out of clear skies!"

"You better hope nothing's scratched, because I swear--"

The argument faded to familiar background noise as chaos headed for the lift, unnoticed by the rest of the crew. He tugged on his gloves--nervously, though he didn't want to admit it to himself--and queried the chill in his heart. _What is this? Why am I feeling so strange about a little turbulence?_

The unacknowledged part of him, the one he struggled to ignore, unfurled its wings and whispered: _The Tower is falling._

chaos's eyes widened.

"No..."

---

_Aboard the _Dämmerung

More than a hundred lightyears away, something else echoed chaos's sentiment.

The quake that had rocked the _Durandal_ to its very core and cost the lives of hundreds of its crewers caused the mighty _Dämmerung _to tremble only slightly. That breath of a quiver was enough to perturb the Compass of Order, sending its glimmering wheels spinning into chaos.

It took Wilhelm a moment to realize something was wrong, even though he registered the tremor that he should not have felt, out here in space and lightyears from anything that could disturb the _Dämmerung. _After a moment, he looked up at the Compass.

A frown creased his face as he noticed its odd behavior, and he reached up to touch a hand to it gently. The spinning ceased--but it did so entirely. Wilhelm could feel something wrong with it; there was no motion left in it at all, as if it were nothing more than some pretty bauble he'd bought for a negligible sum to act as a paperweight.

Not the priceless piece of equipment it was.

Not the Compass of Order.

In that moment, Wilhelm felt a tiny thread of fear worm through his heart.

"...No. It's much too soon for that. It can't be."

The whole world was on the edge of collapse, and the Compass knew it.


	3. The Man in Black

**Chapter 2: The Man in Black**

_Office of the Director, Kukai Foundation_

"He hasn't come to yet, Master Kukai." "The poor Little Master--oh, I wish I knew what was wrong with him!"

Gaignun closed his green eyes, touching a hand to his temple as Shelley and Mary gave their report. It was nothing he didn't already know, but it never hurt to have more information. "I know. And rest assured that I will know when he comes around."

It didn't help that Junior had been unconscious for the entirety of the two weeks it had taken the _Durandal_ to reach the Kukai Foundation. It didn't help that the Foundation itself had been devastated by the same bizarre tremor that had injured its cruiser. It didn't help that Albedo was somehow involved, but Gaignun would be damned if he knew how.

Which reminded him. "And--our visitor? Have you disposed of him appropriately?"

A slight frown creased Shelley's face. "Yes. We put him in a detention cell on the fifth sublevel. He's been restrained, and we cleared the entire level out. However, he has yet to awaken." Mary nodded her acknowledgment.

"He was out of it when we got to his mech! We thought he was dead--cold and clammy, and no pulse either, brr! And that smell--" Mary shuddered audibly. Gaignun simply rubbed at his temple slightly, to forestall the oncoming migraine. _And it still probably won't be enough to keep him, when--or if--he awakens._

"Rest assured, Mary, that he's not dead and this probably isn't the last of him," Gaignun finally said, opening his eyes and looking up at the two sisters. "Or Junior, for that matter." _He--they--will be fine. Much as I hate to admit it in Albedo's case._ But hate it or not, it was true that Junior and Albedo's lives were linked inextricably, and if one pulled through a crisis, the other would be sure to. For the first time in more than fourteen years, Gaignun found himself hoping Albedo's unnatural vitality would be enough for both of his brothers.

"I still wish I knew what happened..." Mary fretted, interrupting the silence. She laced her hands together and began pacing back and forth. Shelley stood near the center of the room, serving as an anchor for her nervous sister. Gaignun watched the interaction between them in silence, focusing on them as he might an attractive piece of kinetic sculpture. Except this one provoked a twinge of jealousy; if Junior had been awake, it would have been him pacing the floor and Gaignun anchoring, or vice versa. Even if his older brother was often more rash than he should be, Gaignun sorely missed his advice and energy.

"I don't think we'll get any concrete answers until the Little Master--or Albedo--awakens," Shelley replied, flatly.

Mary huffed out a breath in annoyance, turning on a heel. "I know, I know! But somebody's gotta know something, Shelley!" She pauses, turning to address Gaignun directly. "Master Gaignun--has there been anything from Vector? Did they feel--you know--whatever hit the _Durandal_?"

He was slow to stir out of his meditative trance, but both sisters waited patiently for him to speak. "CEO Wilhelm contacted me perhaps an hour after the incident occurred," he began, slowly.

The "incident". That's what all the UMN news channels had been calling it, too. As far as anyone knew, the effects had been felt as far away as the distant border colonies on the galactic verge. Fifth Jerusalem's news networks had been alive within seconds with reports of the strange "earthquake" that had tumbled buildings to the ground, knocked shuttles flaming from the sky, and killed thousands, if not millions, of Federation citizens. And yet there hadn't been so much as a peep out of Vector or any of their affiliates about what might have caused it or if they had been hit as hard as everyone else.

"He extended his condolences for those killed on the _Durandal_ and the Foundation itself." They hadn't even had any concrete estimates of their casualties, but there Wilhelm had been, apologizing sincerely for their loss. _Almost as if it had been his fault,_ Gaignun had thought at the time--and he couldn't shake that nagging idea. "As you know, this was well before we had any reports back on our own casualty count--and before we had released any information on our losses to the public."

Both women nodded. Shelley looked grim. Mary was saddened. Neither was surprised. They were both quite intelligent, and knew very well not to be surprised by anything that came out of Vector or Wilhelm's ineffable knowledge. It didn't comfort Gaignun in the least, though, that he wasn't alone in knowing that.

"It was very strange. He was quite frank with me--he told me in no uncertain terms that he knew exactly what had happened, but he couldn't release the details to me until Junior was awake." That had galled, though Gaignun hadn't allowed any of the jealousy--and bitterness--it provoked to show. _He_ was the one who had built the Kukai Foundation to what it was today; even if Junior was his older sibling, Gaignun was more responsible and more level-headed by far. Why couldn't Wilhelm trust him with information on what had happened, what had killed the people under his command?

_Maybe because he knows you can't _really _get anything done, Nigredo._ THAT was definitely not one of Gaignun's thoughts. He groaned inwardly, touching a hand to his temple and half-closing his eyes. It would just figure. It would FIGURE, just when he least needed the interruption--_Shut up, Father. I don't need you telling me how to run my life,_ he snapped back, irritably. Shelley raised her head slightly, frowning; Mary, ever solicitous, stepped over to the desk.

"...Are you all right, Master Gaignun...?"

The nasty presence in the back of Gaignun's mind withdrew a little, as if frightened. Gaignun thanked God for the small mercy and raised his head. "I'm fine. Just a bit of a headache. Anyway--I don't think we'll be getting anything out of Vector until Junior is awake."

"And we don't know when that will be," Shelley said, her tone morose--even for her.

Gaignun frowned. "Yes. I admit, we're in a bit of a quandary."

"It's horrible, is what it is," Mary said, forlorn. She stopped her pacing, leaning on Shelley's shoulder and heaving a gusty sigh. "I just wish I knew what we were going to _do_ about all this mess."

Gaignun didn't have to answer; Shelley got it for him: "Clean it up. Repairs to the Foundation superstructure are 35 completed. The _Durandal_ will be in dry dock at least two more months before she'll be space-worthy again." She looked straight at Gaignun.

He smiled thinly at her. "And I anticipate, with any luck, Junior will be awake by then. Wilhelm didn't seem all that urgent when I spoke to him. I want to write this all off as some kind of fluke."

Shelley's frown deepened. "But you can't."

"Of course I can't."

_Not when existence itself seems to be on the line._


	4. The Rose

**Chapter 3: The Rose**

_this is all a dream_

"Sakura! Come and see!"

He waits outside her window for a sign, knowing if her mother catches her they'll both be in trouble. But their bond is deeper than the chance of a little scolding; they are in love

(_an-tet_)

and not even the promise of grounding can keep him away from her.

"Come on, Sakura! Wake up!" That's a voice a lot like his; the messenger he sent inside to get her is doing his job. They, too, are together (_an-tet_), though not quite the same way he and Sakura are.

The hardest part is waiting.

"Come ooooon!" He knows he's not going to hear the sound of her voice answering, not out here in reality. But still he strains anyway, hoping to catch some sound of her in response to the rude awakening. His heart quickens as the sound of not one but two stairs of feet on the stairs, and then the door creaks open.

Two children tumble out into the spring night, a white-haired boy and a dark-haired girl. Two pairs of eyes raise to look up at him; the girl with shock she can't conceal, the boy with a kind of possessive glee. He can't help but smile.

"See? I told you it'd be worth it!" The boy's proud smile widens, and he tugs his friend forward. I brought her, Rubedo! Just like I said I would.

His smile widens, baring fangs. She cringes back, but the white-haired boy places a steadying hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry, Sakura," he soothes. "It's just Rubedo." The boy looks up at him again, and he spreads his wings invitingly.

Come on. I'll give you a ride.

She catches her breath on hearing his voice in her head, the tiniest smile creeping on to her face. She takes a step forward, reaching up to touch his face gently. The boy stands behind her, one hand still upraised, still smiling fit to burst. Really? he asks, hesitant.

Sure! And quick as thought he scoops them both up off the ground in his taloned paws, eliciting a gasp and a gleeful shriek from the two children. Depositing them both on his back, he spreads his wings wider and takes a running leap off the ground. Hang on!

And just as he spreads his scarlet wings for the first downbeat, the world tears apart. He can't hold on as everything falls apart beneath him, feeling his very bones tear apart and crack to their marrow. But worse still is the sound of terrified shrieking as the tempest plucks his other half and his beloved (_an-tet_) off his back, throwing them to the screaming maw of the storm.

And then he's screaming too and there's no respite from the world ending around him, none but blackness and total oblivion as the Tower falls.

_this is reality_

Junior woke up screaming.

---

_Uzuki family home, Second Miltia_

"Oh, darn it!" Shion muttered under her breath as the teacup slipped out of her trembling grip. It hit the table, bounced off, and shattered on the lacquered wooden floor. The sound, though small, echoed through the empty house. Shion shivered, tucking her old bathrobe tighter around her body--more for comfort than warmth.

"Jin's going to kill me when he gets back..." she continued aloud, bending down to scoop up the pieces of porcelain. One thin splinter stabbed into her finger as she went to pick it up; she yanked back, shaking her hand in saying several very unladylike words. A drop or two of blood spattered on the floor; Shion hurriedly raised the finger to her mouth and sucked at the wound disconsolately, until the salt-copper taste of blood faded somewhat. She'd later regret not bandaging it.

She sighed then, pulling her finger from her mouth and pressing at the wound to see that nothing was left in it. "I'm such a klutz," she murmured to herself, picking up the last of the pieces and heading to the kitchen to dispose of them.

The kitchen was colder than the rest of the house, and had been since the strange "earthquake" that had shaken the entire planet. Winter decided to come early on the heels of the catastrophe--a strange winter, planet-wide, like a sudden and disturbing global cooling. Snow sheeted down from leaden skies on a daily basis, just a few flakes at first, then blizzards, then ice storms. Today was the first day it had let up, and Jin, Ziggy, and chaos had elected to make the trek through the snow and ice back to town for supplies. MOMO was still abed, packed in under two electric blankets to keep warm. KOS-MOS was...

Shion found herself a new cup and filled it with tea from the kettle on the stove. She cupped her hands around it, letting the warmth seep through her frozen joints and bones. KOS-MOS was back in the snowbound capital of Second Miltia, probably locked in her maintenance pod while the Vector engineering staff addressed the more "practical" problem of dealing with the damage done by the quake--and the persistent snowfall. It hurt Shion's heart to think of her KOS-MOS--who'd been growing up so well, even through all the unusual trials that had confronted them after the _Woglinde_'s destruction--as trapped back in that little tiny pod again, unable to explore or develop. _It's just not fair! They might cripple her progress!_

She took a sip of her tea, relishing the acrid green taste of it. It helped chase away the painful line of thought, clearing her mind as well as her palette. _Well, at least some of Jin's ancient traditions have their uses._ She smiled a wan little smile, and returned to the living room. There she seated herself at one of the short tables Jin favored, setting the teacup down and using the sleeve of her bathrobe to scrub up the spots of blood on the floor. _If only he'd get some desks and chairs; then I'd be happier about tolerating them._ Oh well. She made do.

Spread out on the table before her were reams and reams of plastic flimsies, printouts from Jin's UMN console. Even though she--and the rest of the tiny community Jin chose to live in--was snowbound, it didn't make her any less a Vector employee, and she'd been roped into processing data and trying to find the facts behind the earthquake and sudden cooling. But nothing was occurring to her, and so for the fourth time in the half-hour, she picked up the nearest stack of flimsies and shuffled through it. "Seasonal precip averages, seasonal temperature averages, variations in axial tilt," she muttered aloud. "I just don't see how--"

"Shion?"

Shion startled, nearly knocking the new tea cup off the table and onto the floor. She grabbed it at the last second, sloshing warm tea over her fingers but preventing it from breaking. _Too close! _She set the cup upright, and pressed a hand to her chest. "--MOMO! I'm sorry, you just surprised me." She got up from her awkward kneeling position and turning to face the little Realian girl.

MOMO looked especially small and fragile, Shion noted unhappily. The Realian had a blanket clutched around her hunched shoulders, and her normally bright gold eyes were dim. She tried to muster up a smile on seeing Shion, but failed. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to disturb you. Are you all right?"

It broke Shion's heart. MOMO had been sickening since the earthquake, and the cold hadn't been helping any, but here she was asking if _Shion_ was all right. "Oh, MOMO--I'm fine. Here, did I wake you up?" she asked. She stepped over to the Realian, reaching out to touch MOMO's cheek gently. Despite the glacial chill of the room, MOMO was noticeably warm. _Fever, dull eyes...it's like she's really gotten sick, but I can't begin to think of what might be doing it. _"I was making a lot of noise--I'm sorry if I did."

MOMO shook her head numbly. "N-no--it was...it was a pain, right here." She tapped her chest weakly, over her heart. "Like someone stabbed me, a-and started twisting." She swallowed hard, rubbing her fingers against her chest. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "It still _hurts_..."

Shion reached out once more, catching MOMO's hand. "Do you want something for the pain?" she asked, hesitantly. _It seems so stupid..._ But it was the only thing she could offer. "Maybe you could sleep better if--no?"

"N-no!" MOMO shook her head vigorously. "I don't want to--I don't want to go back to sleep! It hurts, and I have these dreams--about Junior, about _him_...about..." She threw herself at Shion, latching on with desperate strength. Instinctively, Shion folded her arms around the little Realian, holding on to her as she sobbed.

"There, there. It's all right. It's all right--you're awake now, and I'm here," Shion soothed, smoothing MOMO's mussed hair. "Here--come over to the table and sit down with me, MOMO. Come on--there's a good girl..." Shion led the sobbing Realian over to the cushion she'd been sitting on, drawing MOMO down to sit in her lap. She wrapped her arms around MOMO, cradling the Realian against her as she sobbed and stroking a hand through that fine pink hair. "It's all right, MOMO--it's going to be okay, I'm here..." _Is this what it feels like to have a daughter?_

Despite Shion's reassurance, MOMO continued to cry, burying her face against Shion's shoulder and sobbing for all she was worth. "It h-hurts...Shion, it h-hurts so much and it won't _stop_, it w-won't let me go and I'm scared--I-I want Daddy, I want him...I want him...t-to come back...and make it stop hurting..." Her words dissolved into tiny choking cries, her fingers curling in the fabric of Shion's robe. Shion held her, still murmuring reassurances and feeling completely useless.

"Shh, don't cry--I'm sorry, I'm here, I'm here...shhh, don't worry..."

Gradually, MOMO's sobbing subsided to faint whimpers, then sniffles. Shion ran a hand down her back, holding her close. At last, hiccuping softly, MOMO snuggled in close and fell still. Shion nestled her head against the Realian's, sighing softly. "Does it hurt less now?" _I know when I cry, it makes the hurt go away for a little while._

MOMO shook her head. "N-no...but I feel a little better."

Shion swallowed, finding herself at a loss for words. "Well, that's good," she ventured. "I...I'm sorry, I just...I'm not sure what to say..." She trailed off as MOMO began sniffling again, stroking the Realian's hair. "...Shhh. Don't cry, it's all right." MOMO buried her face against Shion's chest once more and went quiet.

Things were silent for several moments, aside from the occasional sniffle from MOMO. Shion wrapped her arms around the little Realian, rocking a little in place. Her father had held her like this when she was very small; she still remembered the comfort it brought. Even if her parents were long dead now, those memories lingered, a tiny fraction of sweetness from that time. _But she's..._ The child of a madman. MOMO had never had that chance. Shion held her all the tighter for that.

"I'm worried about Junior," MOMO said suddenly. "W-we haven't heard anything from him since he left. And since--what happened."

"I am too." A sudden shudder coursed through Shion's body. "We haven't even heard anything from the Kukai Foundation...since their press release...and they said..."

MOMO sniffed again. "So many people dead," she murmured. "And hurt...I wish we could help."

"Mmm."

They fell silent again, both contemplating this dramatic change their world had taken. Shion's fingers traced senseless patterns on MOMO's shoulder as the Realian leaned against her, shivering. The same thought hung in the air between them: Had Junior been one of the dead on the _Durandal_? Is that why they'd heard nothing out of him? "Well," Shion said at last, just to break the silence. "I'm sure we would have heard about it, if--if he had."

MOMO hiccuped. "Y-yes, I...guess we would have."

As unsatisfactory as the answer was, it would have to do. It did not soothe Shion's fears.

---

_Fifth Sublevel, Kukai Foundation_

Cold.

Cold, it was too cold, and he hurt.

He always hurt. But he hurt more now, a deep ache in his guts that made him want to throw up his last meal. Whenever that had been. He wasn't sure; his internal sense of time was badly skewed, so all he felt was its passage, like grains of sand trickling through an hourglass. It was moving too quickly, that's all he knew. And he knew he'd been out for a long time, but not _how_ long or even if it was too long.

He tried to stretch--reach out, see where he was confined before he opened his eyes--but no use. He'd been bound. Which obviated the need to roll over and puke until the _hurting_ subsided. (But somehow, he was sure it wouldn't.) He relaxed back against the floor, stretched out as far as he could in his bonds. No point in fighting; he was an old hand at escape, and found that struggle was usually useless until he knew exactly what his current situation was.

Of course, we read all this as a single seamless narrative; to him, it was perhaps thirty minutes of picking out and discarding thoughts, thought-_fragments_ in a mind shattered worse than a dropped plate. Awakening was always the worst, after all his defenses had broken down in whatever dreamless realm of monsters (sounds Hawaiian, doesn't it?) lurked just behind his consciousness, and what scanty order he could assemble crept away, lost, lost, O Discordia!

A good reason as any to not sleep and invite that small relative of death into his life.

But that's right. If he had the leisure to be asleep for weeks--many and many-a, delah, say true--time was probably not _too _far gone. He let out a breath he'd been holding long enough to sear his lungs, letting his hands uncurl and opening his eyes. Order came flooding back with what dim light met his eyes, his purpose, name, rank, serial number with it.

A shrill, choking laugh escaped his lips, as he arched his back against his bonds. "You bastard, you little _bastard_," Albedo snarled.

Oh, he'd get out. Say true, he'd get out. Whether or not the winding, gnawing pain within him would let him alone, he'd get out.


	5. The First Angel

**Chapter 4: The First Angel**

_Second Miltia_

Cold as it was in Albedo's cell, Second Miltia was still colder.

chaos had never seen the like of such a snowfall, not in this particular part of existence, anyway. It made him happy for the thick gloves he perpetually wore to hide his hands, for they served the more practical job of cutting out the chill as he and his companions slogged in single-file down the road. Ziggurat 8 plodded ahead, breaking up a back-trail that had filled with drifted snow in the scant two hours they'd been away. Behind him, the rest of the expeditionary party trudged, silent and withdrawn as pallbearers.

And weren't they? The snowfall was more than simply winter's white pall, but a frozen warning of the world's accelerating decay. And here chaos, Jin, and Ziggurat were, cutting their way through the unnatural snow, grim-faced harbingers of another sign of that decay.

They'd found the settlement nearest the Uzuki home dead. Not abandoned--dead. The only living things in the streets had been artificial carrion crows, fighting over the corpses in the streets where they'd fallen. Despite the frigid conditions, the bodies were already under advance decay. The stench of rot lay thick in the air. Even stoic Jin had stopped once or twice to compose himself, unable to bear the stares of their blackened rotting eyes.

chaos shivered, but it had nothing to do with the cold. With time he'd grown accustomed to the cruelties of the world, aware of them but never quite allowing them to touch his heart. Yet when _ka_ itself was the perpetrator of those cruelties, it became that much harder to let them pass him by. He supposed it was a clarion call to awaken and take his duties back up once more, and one he liked very little. _Coward_, murmured that sleeping part of him. _You're a coward, Joshua._ Again, he shivered, tugging nervously at his gloves.

They'd found bodies out as far as a mile away, collapsed in the snow where they walked or stood, like ants fleeing a poisoned anthill. But chaos could verify that whatever had taken them was neither poison nor disease; though his companions couldn't know it, it was simple cold knowledge and no eldricht powers that told him this. It was the Crimson King's hand behind it, and only the signs of rage exacted on the poor corpses of those who had fled told him that the low men who'd carried out the dirty work had failed their objective.

That, and the King's _sigul_, carved into the back of a dead Realian.

---

Jin had found her.

"What--" The startled word caught chaos's attention; he looked up from the confusion of tracks in the snow he'd been examining for clues on just what had happened.

"Jin, is everything all right?"

No response.

Ziggurat stirred from where he was examining a stand of damaged brush, some ten feet away. He looked up at chaos, expression composed in a wordless question. The youth shook his head, indicating the way Jin had gone. _Come on_, he mouthed. The cyborg nodded.

"Jin?" chaos called again, turning in the direction the swordsman had gone. "Is everything all right? Do you need help?"

This time, the muffled sound of retching met his ears. chaos's frown deepened. He picked up his feet, pushing through the underbrush. He could hear Ziggy tromping along behind him as he did. "Jin?"

At last, much to chaos's relief, a reply came: "I'm all right, chaos." He didn't sound it, though. The youth pushed through the last of the brush screen, scuffling through the snow to the swordman's side.

Jin looked up from the slow process of regaining his composure, wiping at the corner of his mouth with the back of one hand. He didn't look at either of his companions as they stepped into the clearing; his dark eyes were fixed on a heap bundled at his feet in the snow. chaos could smell blood.

"I found her," the swordsman volunteered, as the other two came closer. "Over there."

He indicated another copse of trees, these blood-smeared and battered down. "She'd been hung--"

"--by her ankles," chaos murmured, stepping over to the trees. The pattern of broken branches down their length told the gruesome story. The snow beneath was dyed red with blood, spread out into a long roostertail back to where Jin had moved her. "And," chaos continued, reaching up to touch the nearest tree. The blood on it still had a hint of warmth. "She was still alive."

Jin's voice was choked. "Yes. She died just as I got to her."

"Did you know her?"

chaos turned, surprised to see Ziggy crouched over the girl's body. The cyborg shifted the corpse's limbs gently, examining her wounds with a practiced eye. _Impassive. Doing his duty._ It was what chaos had come to expect from Ziggy since he'd first met him as Jan Sauer--something the cyborg lamentably didn't remember. But there was a certain heaviness to Ziggy's motions that also dated back to his days as Sauer, one chaos didn't like. _But he's remembering._ Nephilim would have told him that memory wasn't a bad thing, and chaos would usually agree. But why _now_? Why did the cyborg's remorse and grief have to come back to the surface now, when chaos most needed him to be steady?

He took a deep breath. _No. They're only mortal. And they don't know what's happening. I need to let them go at their own pace._

Jin's voice, strangely hesitant, brought him back to reality: "She was a friend of the family. A good friend of Shion's. I'd thought to go visit her the night we got back, but the snow was..." He trailed off.

"I see."

Ziggy continued to examine the body. chaos wiped the blood off his fingers in the snow, walking silently over to watch the cyborg's field autopsy. Jin stood by, a deep frown etched on his face.

"She'd been raped before they killed her," Ziggy announced, after several moments of study. "After they tore out her eyes. Here--" He pointed at the Realian's blood-streaked face. "Tear tracks." Jin swallowed hard.

"And--" The cyborg turned the corpse over, and paused. chaos sucked in a deep breath. _No!_ "--that's odd."

There, between her shoulder blades, a stylized eye had been carved into her flesh. Bright red, staring, implacable, it seemed to glare up at the three men, even as it weeped tears of drying blood down the girl's back. Ziggy considered it for several seconds, before rising from his crouch, looking at Jin. "That symbol. Have you seen it before? Was it on any of the other bodies?"

"No," chaos replied, suppressing a quaver in his voice. _**No! **Not them, not here!_ "She's the only one."

"It looks like a ritual killing." Ziggy again. He turned his steady blue gaze on chaos, looking for answers. "Rape her, hang her up to bleed out, carve the cult symbol on her back."

chaos was silent. _No. I refuse to believe it. They can't be here, they can't!_

Jin shook his head slowly. He removed his coat from his shoulders, leaning down to cover the girl's body with it despite the cold. Then he rose, turning to chaos and considering the youth for several long seconds. "chaos, old friend. You look like you have something you don't want to tell us." He paused, and exchanged glances with Ziggurat. chaos could read the nervousness in both of them, anxiety that led back to Jin's home up in the mountains and the two women waiting there for them. _And Allen,_ chaos reminded himself. _I hope he's strong enough to protect them. I hope--_

"Yes," he finally said. "I know who did this, though I'm not sure you'll believe me." Something occurred to him suddenly, something he didn't like. "Jin--you knew her in life. I'm sorry; this seems callous--but what model number was she?"

Jin blinked, puzzled by the question. "A 100-Series. Just like--MOMO."

_Oh no._ "We need to get home now," chaos said firmly. "I'll explain when we get back."

Once more, Jin and Ziggy exchanged glances. "I'll break trail," the cyborg said.

"Let's get going."

---

Two hours. Two hours. Thirty minutes' hike out, an hour and half spent investigating the ruin of the settlement, and now they were nearly back to the Uzuki home. Nightfall was coming fast, bringing with it a deeper chill. chaos could see Jin suppressing shivers as they walked, trying to keep his hands warm by folding them in the sleeves of his robe. Somehow, chaos thought it wasn't just the cold getting to the swordsman.

He picked up his pace, stepping carefully around patches of unbroken snow that could conceal a trap for an unwary foot. "Jin?" he called, softly, before reaching to touch the swordsman on the shoulder. Tension, anxiety--and above all, worry for Shion and MOMO--flooded across the moment's sympathetic connection, even as Jin turned dark hollow eyes to his friend.

"chaos," he replied, trying to muster some form of civility. "Is something wrong?"

chaos had to smile, just a little. "I was about to ask you the same thing, old friend. What's worrying you?"

Jin looked away, shrugging out from under chaos's hand. The youth didn't try to hold on; he folded his arms across his chest and fell into step beside the swordsman. After several seconds of silence, he ventured a guess: "Shion's a very strong woman, Jin. If any trouble came after her or MOMO, they would be able to protect themselves."

"If she saw it coming," Jin said, bitterly. "My little sister doesn't have a grain of sense--she'd stand in front of a charging Gnosis and ask it questions if she thought it would get her 'better data'."

This was true, if larded with a little familiar contempt for Shion's skills. chaos shook his head. "Allen is with them, too," he replied. "He's got a good head on his shoulders. He'll take care of them."

"I don't like the way he looks at her." Now it wasn't just bitterness but jealousy that chaos heard in Jin's tone. "Always following her around. I should have just stayed home with them."

chaos sighed and shook his head. "He cares for her, Jin. He wouldn't hurt her--trust me on this one, okay? I--"

"The lights are off."

Ziggy's voice cut them both off. Jin looked up the trail, frowning in the dark. chaos followed his gaze, feeling another thread of fear worm through his heart.

The family home should have been visible, a bright beacon in the lowering shades of dusk. Instead, all that could be made out of it was a vague dark shape in the wan moonlight, black against a backdrop of snow. chaos listened for several long seconds; even with the lights off, the hum of the family's transmit generator should have been audible. But nothing came. "The generator's out," he murmured, softly. "Maybe the power died and they went to bed?"

"It's a little early for that," Jin said. His voice was steady, despite the worsening fear chaos could feel from him. "And the generator shouldn't be out; I've got batteries on there."

Ziggurat, who had been watching the house silently, remarked: "There are heat signatures in the house. I can't make them out at this distance."

Silence reigned for a moment.

"--Let's go," Jin finally said, breaking into a sprint up the slope.

chaos couldn't agree more. He glanced at Ziggy, then ran after the swordsman. Seconds later, he could hear the cyborg clomping along behind them.

It was a short sprint up the path to the house, even in the snow. Jin made it to the door first, operating the manual lock with a haste that made him flub the combination twice before he got it. He pushed inside. chaos caught the door before it could fall closed, holding it long enough for Ziggy to catch up and follow them in.

Inside, it was warmer, if only slightly. Ziggurat stood by the door, letting Jin and chaos advance cat-footed into the house. Jin still had a hand on his sword; chaos unleashed a little of his power, letting it gather in his fingers and palms. As they passed through the entryway to the sitting room, the coppery scent of blood met his nose and tongue, faint but there. "Blood," he murmured.

Jin nodded grimly, slipping past a paper wall partitioning the sitting room. The scent of blood was stronger here, but not by much. He slowed further, and chaos caught up with him. "Where now?" he whispered.

"The bedroom," the swordsman murmured, jerking his head toward it. chaos stretched on the metaphysical plane, before reaching out toward the indicated room. Auras, warm and bright.

"Good choice," he replied.

They slipped toward the bedroom door, moving as quietly as they could. chaos debated the merits of simply phasing through it, and in so doing missed the stray teacup lying in the hall just outside the door.

crunch It shattered under his boot, reduced to fine shards of porcelain dust. Jin cringed, glancing over his shoulder and giving the youth an agonized look. chaos shrugged an apology, stepping away from the broken teacup--

Only to catch sight of a dark shape looming up before them, just before it gave a blood-curdling shriek and lunged.

"JIN!"


	6. The Hounds of Winter

**Chapter 5: The Hounds of Winter**

_Second Miltia_

Weathertop was a biological sport, one of those rare accidents that happened even with advanced bioengineering. Someone had gotten their wires crossed back at Vector HQ and put the wrong cell culture into the wrong Realian growth vat, and produced a singular being: A male 100-Series Observational Realian.

He looked like a Weapons-Grade, from the blond hair and handsome features, to the muscular build and abnormal strength. But it came packaged with the child-like body and the fine-tuned senses of the Chiban, along with the built-in Hilbert Generator. The small size was often galling to him, but--he thought, as he paced through the snow--it did have its advantages.

"Take these Tower-kissing fools I've been following," he remarked to himself, just for the pleasure of hearing his own voice. That voice was one of his best features, if he did say so himself; the vocal instrument of a seducer, masculine and commanding despite his diminutive size. His second owner had schooled him in the use of his mouth, both for speaking and other reasons; it was a lesson he'd kept even after he'd gutted her and stuffed her ovaries down her throat.

"Why, Weathertop, you might say. Aren't the can calah good at sensing the presence of the enemies of all existence? Can toi, do it please ya? Like that fine, well-favored boy up there with the silver hair--why, he can even send Los's good ghosts onto their second deaths with just a touch. Surely he might be able to sense one of Los's servants on the hoof, tracking him and his motley little ka-tet as they check what we did to their fine little village." He chuckled pleasantly to himself. He'd practiced that laugh, too. Pleasant, they'd said it was. Made him seem perfectly normal. Just what he wanted.

"But did Sai Cam-a, little white-head himself, notice me? No, of course not! Because Weathertop's small and clever, y'see. He hides real good, hides better than one of the snowy ptarmigan out here in this gods-blasted snow." Weathertop paused, kicking up a lump of it. "But it doesn't do poor old Weathertop much good to be sneakier than his own self in a dead girl, now does it, because his ki'can subordinates are _completely incompetent._"

He turned around, smiling pleasantly at the last of those same ki'can subordinates. "Does it, Roger?"

Roger was one of those ill-favored folks who God must have spit on. Only twenty years of age, he looked like a much older man from pox-scarring. His eyes were a muddy yellow, his hair the same color and perpetually matted in three different directions. His looks weren't enhanced by the fact half of his face had been ripped off, exposing the wormy red fur and rodent-like mandibles beneath. Roger was one of those rejects of the _Prim _better know as the can toi. Was will be the operative word in a second, as you'll see, my dears.

Roger shuddered where he'd been tied to a tree, squeaking like a pinky mouse in the back of his ugly throat. "Sai Top," he gibbered. "We'd tried to get the information out of them, swear we asked if they'd seen the Rose, it's just that m'brother has an itchy finger on the trigger, y'see, and then we had to keep them from running, and then their police-thingers, the gunslingers with the blue uniforms, they came after us and we had to put them down, swear we did, honest!" He broke off and whined.

"Weren't my fault! Promise it won't happen again, just don't kill me like the others!"

Weathertop let the rat-thing exhaust his pleas, still smiling. "Well, I never said I didn't have a bit of mercy in my heart. If you really say it was your brother who started that massacre before we could find out where the skirt had taken her Rose, then I'll be amenable to letting you down. But let me tell you--" He pulled a knife from his jumpsuit, flipping it open and leaning in. Roger's stench nearly overwhelmed his delicate senses, bringing with it the subtler signs of genetic decay. Roger, like most of the can toi, was being eaten alive by cancer.

"You'll need to," the Realian continued in a whisper. "Get down here and lick my boots, so they'll be nice and shiny when I walk into Uzuki's house to introduce myself. You get me?"

Roger whined, nodding rapidly. "Anything you say, sai! Just lemme down!"

"Well, all right then." Weathertop leaned back, indulging in a deep breath of clean winter air to clear his senses. "We'll let you down." He flicked out the knife, slicing through Roger's bonds and dropping the can toi to the snow.

Roger cowered, burrowing his snout in the snow and burbling. "Thankee sai, thankee, thankee for bein' so generous to a poor scrap such as I," he mumbled.

"Oh, don't thank me yet." Sliding forward one of his boots, the child-like Realian leaned down to pat Roger fondly on the head. "You've still got boots to be licking."

"Yessai! Right away!" And with another of those disgusting grunts, Roger applied his tongue to Weathertop's boots.

The Realian checked his embedded wristwatch as the process wore on, listening to his shoe-shine boy snuffle and squeal enthusiastically. _That's right, make 'em nice and clean, _Weathertop thought. _Maybe I'll let you live a little while longer._ He paused, mentally checking the charge on his Hilbert Generator--and grinned. _Or not._ It took only a breath to trigger his internal circuits, the fatal blue and violet and green bloom of the Hilbert Effect erupting around them.

Roger screeched like a rabbit being slaughtered, coughing up blood on Weathertop's boots. The Realian shook his head sadly, turning off the generator and sighing. "Now, see. You got them all bloody again." He raised his other boot and rested it on Roger's skull. "Lick it back up, Roger."

It took another thirty minutes and three applications of the Hilbert Effect before Roger's heart gave out, and Weathertop's boots were no cleaner than before. He left the can toi's body in the clearing, and continued on to pick up Ziggy's backtrail.

---

_Fifth Sublevel, Kukai Foundation_

With all the computer equipment and what scanty number of the Foundation's employees that worked in the second quadrant of the fifth sublevel were cleared out, the place had all the ambience of a mausoleum. All but the most necessary of lights had been turned off, conserving power for damaged areas that needed it more. Each of Junior's footsteps echoed off the cavernous walls, without any furniture or human bodies to soak up the sound.

He shuddered. _Cold, dark, and empty. Gaignun, why did you have to play to him?_

A hand landed on his shoulder, warm and solid. Junior glanced up at the taller URTV who had accompanied him, still frowning. _Well?_

_Would you rather I had left people in here for him to torment, Junior?_ Gaignun frowned slightly. Junior looked away abruptly, chewing at his thumbnail.

_No--no, I just...I don't want to do this. I don't want to deal with him right now._ Or ever, but Junior didn't need to say that one for Gaignun to pick up on it.

Surprisingly, the younger URTV gave Junior's shoulder a reassuring squeeze. Startled, Junior slowed, looking up at Gaignun again. The other URTV managed a wan smile. _We could always just leave him where he is, then. Even with his abilities, that containment cell will hold him for another few months. You can face him when you're ready._ He paused, considering, before adding: _Better than letting him get to you like this._

It was an appealing idea. Junior considered it for all of a few seconds, before shaking his head and looking across the echoing room. The containment field was a dim spot of blue light some fifty feet away. The cell behind it was dark; Junior imagined that was because its occupant had taken out the light strips on awakening. _Like some kind of crazy vampire._ "No," he said aloud.

_No. I gotta do this myself, even if I don't like it. _He glanced up at Gaignun again, tapping his chest. _He's my responsibility for as long as I can still feel his heartbeat. I've gotta make him stop being an idiot._

_You want him back,_ Gaignun observed. Junior winced, but nodded.

_I want him back. I want him to be my little brother again._

Gaignun patted him on the head. _I'll help you however I can, then. I don't think this is wise, but we do owe it to him._

Junior took a deep breath and nodded. "Yeah. We do." _Let's go._

They picked up their feet, crossing the last fifty feet to the containment cell. It was even darker and emptier than it had appeared from a distance, only the glow and hum of the forcefield around it breaking the dimness and silence. Junior stopped in front of the field, laying a hand against it and leaning in close. _He had to have heard us coming. And I can feel him in there. What's he doing?_

Gaignun opened his mouth to reply.

"BOO!"

Something hit the forcefield hard with a thump and a giggle. "Dammit!" Junior yelped, stumbling back and clutching at his chest.

Albedo slumped against the field, still giggling and burying a hand in his hair. "You should've seen the look on your face, Rubedo! Tsk, tsk--aww, did I scare you?" The madman straightened up, pushing away from the forcefield and grinning at his brothers.

"You look so frightened! I can feel your heart pounding. Right--here." He tapped the left side of his chest, seeming to enjoy the glare Junior gave him. The madman's purple eyes flicked away for a moment, focusing on something behind Junior--before he gave another gleeful laugh. "Ahh! And you brought the Executioner, too! My, my--it's really my lucky day. Time for a little family reunion, huh?"

_Executioner?_ _Gaignun, what's--_ Junior cut himself off as he picked up Gaignun's annoyance with the title.

_I'll explain later. Deal with your twin._

"Well?" Albedo was watching them both expectantly now, still grinning.

Junior took another deep breath. "Naw. That would mean I'm happy to see you, you bastard, and I'm not."

"I'm hurt!" Albedo mimed taking a heart-thrust, folding his hands over his chest. "You've finally caught me, and you're not happy? Why, Rubedo," he leaned in, voice dropping to a purr, "I'd thought you'd be delighted."

"Nope, not happy at all." Which was a lie. Some small part of Junior was very happy to have finally caught Albedo. That same small part was thrilled that Junior had a chance after all these years to stop hiding his dark half and make Albedo see reason, no matter what it took. We are always the most forgiving with those we truly love.

"Hm." Albedo affected a pout, before glancing up at Gaignun again. "And you, Nigredo? Why, you've got no more competition for your attentions. Isn't that sweet? Of course, that is--" He straightened up, chuckling.

"If either of you is brave enough to kill me. Is that what this is about? Finally settling all our old debts?" He gave a little jerk of his fingers, the eerie purple light of U-DO's energy gathering at his fingertips. "We can finish it right here, you know. All three of us. Just for old times' sake."

Junior growled, already tasting the the consciousness's scent in the back of his throat. The power within him

(_the red dragon, an organism capable of doing a great amount of good_)

boiled up, clawing its way up from its hiding place below his belly and sinking fiery claws into his spine. He could see the red light building around him at the corners of his vision; already, his mind was clouding with anger, the need to release the Dragon and wipe this U-DO-tainted

(_my enemy, my old enemy_)

_thing_ that stood before him completely out of existence.

"Albedo, stop this immediately." Gaignun's voice.

_Junior, stop. Don't do this._ But that wasn't Gaignun, that was a girl--"Nephilim?" Junior murmured, shocked.

Albedo blinked, looking briefly poleaxed--Gaignun had obviously put a little of his vocal hypnosis into play--before shrugging and relaxing. A flick of his fingers dismissed the gathering glow around his hands; with it, the red battle aura around Junior winked out of existence. "If you insist," he demurred, with a undercurrent of definite annoyance.

Junior took a step back, taking another breath and trying to relax. _Okay. I'm okay,_ he found himself thinking. Once again, Gaignun lay a hand on his shoulder, steadying him. "That's not why I'm here," he muttered, to his shoes. "I--I need your help."

"Hmm? Say it a little louder." Albedo's look of annoyance transmuted to one of delight, as he leaned in close to the forcefield. "You're muttering and I--can't quite hear you, Rubedo."

_Bastard._

_Steady, Junior._

Junior looked up at his mad twin. "I need your help, Albedo."

Albedo chuckled low in his throat, resting both palms flat against the forcefield. "Why, what a surprise. You, coming to me for help?" He ducked his head, looking his older brother straight in the eyes. "I'd never thought you'd ask. But what could you possibly want from me...?" He pressed a little closer, so he was nearly nose to nose with Junior. "Do you need somebody killed?"

"No!" Junior snapped, then took another breath. "No, I don't need anyone killed, i-idiot. I need--I need some information from you. About what's going on. What happened with the _Durandal._" His poor ship...

Albedo's eyes narrowed, before he pushed back from the forcefield. He chuckled, looked away, tried to pass his manner off as casual disinterest. Junior knew better; there was unease under Albedo's feigned disregard, and it worried him. Even so, the red-haired URTV kept his tongue, trying to give his twin time to formulate a reply. Patience had never been his forte, but he'd begun to learn over the years that it might be worth it to show a little tolerance, even to Albedo, of all people. And where it concerned the damage done to his beloved _Durandal_, Junior was certain he could be patient until death, if it took that.

He came to regret the thought as Albedo's odd silence stretched into the fifth minute. "Well?" he blurted, annoyed. It was unlike the madman to keep quiet if he had something to gloat about, or even something to say. Silence was bizarre. Silence reminded Junior of things he didn't wish to think about. _Miltia. He was like that--_

_He had begun to pull himself away from us, _Gaignun opined. _Even then, even before--_

Junior swallowed. Albedo, oblivious to the exchange and apparently the entire world around him, continued to scratch at the wall. Junior grit his teeth; why did his little brother have to be so _stupid_ sometimes? "_Well?_" he demanded again. He punctuated it with a blow of his fist against the forcefield, causing it to resound and crackle with sustained energy in protest.

The noise seemed to snap Albedo out of whatever reverie he was in. His head jerked up, and he glanced up with a smirk on his face. "Ah! Rubedo--there was something you wanted...? Hm." He composed his expression in a moue of deep thought, turning back to his chicken-scratch on the wall. "Now, what was it--tsk, tsk, my memory's getting so spotty these days, it's a shame. I think I've entirely forgotten--something about helping you? Ahh, but why would you want that? You've never wanted my help before--'I can do it _myself_, Albedo!'. Isn't that right?" He tapped a claw against the wall, and shook his head. "It's got to be my mind. Like a steel trap--old, rusty, and illegal most places."

Junior roared in frustration, one hand darting to the gun at his side. Gaignun moved faster, grabbing him at the wrist and paralyzing his hand with an iron grip. Startled, Junior jerked back, rage forgotten. _Huh?_

_Don't shoot that in here, you little idiot. You'll get us both killed with the rebound. _Gaignun's voice was steely.

_I wasn't gonna! _Junior felt himself flush, and gave another tug on his pinioned wrist. _Lemme go!_

But Gaignun didn't. He kept his hand wrapped tight around Junior's wrist, turning back to Albedo. The madman had watched the whole exchange like a voyeur, amusement shining in his eyes. Gaignun's icy glare did little to quell it. "He wants information on what it was that damaged the _Durandal_ and the Foundation, Albedo," the diplomat said in a clipped voice. "Information we suspect you might have. Do you?"

The madman tilted his head to one side, eyes narrowing. "Why not let him speak for himself, Executioner? Or do you plan to rip out his tongue to keep him under your thumb next?" The words were a challenge, that much was plain.

Gaignun's eyes narrowed. Junior fought a little more with the hand holding his wrist, snarling. _Lemme go, Gaignun! Let me--oof! _When Gaignun did actually let him go, Junior overbalanced, falling smack on his butt. He began to pick himself up, only to stop and stare in shock as Gaignun took one stiff step over to the forcefield.

"Listen to me, you psychopath." Gaignun's voice was soft and commanding. "I do not know, nor do I particularly care, what your designs on Junior are, and I haven't since _you _abandoned _us_ fourteen years ago on Miltia. I cannot imagine, Albedo, what kind of gall it must take to try and kill us, destroy what we've built, destroy our lives, our friends, and our families, and then stand before us and blame _us_ for it all. I don't understand how you got it through your head that you are _perfectly_ justified in doing this, and furthermore, in thinking that _I _pose any threat to Junior."

Junior stared up at his younger brother in mute shock. Albedo was once more looking poleaxed, staring at Gaignun as if the black-haired URTV had suddenly sprouted horns. Not to be deterred, Gaignun rounded on Junior, looking down at his older brother with a severe frown.

"And as for _you_--" The diplomat paused, then caught himself, smoothing his expression out. "--I fully expect you to have this situation under control. I will go contact Security, just in case you can't handle him yourself." And then, briskly: "Good day."

And with that, he headed for the door, back ramrod straight.

Junior blinked, and looked up at Albedo mutely. Albedo returned the look, and shrugged: _Don't look at me._ They waited in hostile silence until Gaignun had left the room.

Albedo gave a casual toss of his head, before leaning against the forcefield, arms folded across his chest. He watched the corner of the room in silence, before demanding, "So what do I get out of it?"

"Huh?" Junior picked himself up off the floor, rubbing at his offended dignity.

"Don't 'huh' me, Rubedo. Everything has a price. If you want information out of me, I expect you to have something to offer. Or else we can just go back to the way things were. Sans Nigredo and his bunched-up panties." Albedo continued to stare at the corner, jaw set. He wasn't smiling, nor did he even sound very amused, which worried Junior. Somewhere under the serious annoyance.

"I dunno, maybe I'll let you out of here instead of letting you rot?" Junior snapped. "Not like I'm gonna let you kill me, or hand MOMO over for you to molest her more."

Albedo let out his breath in a hissing chuckle. "Temper, temper, Rubedo. What, give me something I can already get? I can be out of here in another night." He didn't sound as absolutely sure of it as he usually did, but Junior might have been hearing things. "These prison walls can't hold me and you know it."

Junior's rage had ebbed out of him, leaving behind a weary annoyance at his younger brother's continued stubbornness. "Right, right. I forget you're all-powerful now, one step away from godhood, an' all that," he muttered bitterly. "Guess there's really nothing I can give you except to roll over and die." He turned away from the forcefield.

"How fatalistic of you, Rubedo! You've weakened so over the years." Junior didn't turn around as he heard Albedo shift behind him. He just kept walking away. "So you're really just going to walk away? I--ngh...heheh...never thought you'd..."

Junior stopped in his tracks, closing his eyes and raising a hand to his heart. He could feel Albedo's pain in his own chest, but he didn't particularly care. "Like I said. You can get out or rot in here or do whatever. I don't care anymore, Albedo, if you're going to make helping you so damn hard. I'm tired of playing your games. Just say what the hell it is you want, or leave me alone." He had too much to deal with between _Durandal'_s repairs and whatever Wilhelm wanted him for and keeping the Foundation together to worry about what his stupid little brother wanted now. It felt like a weight lifted from his shoulders to admit that. _I'm sorry, Albedo. I'm done playing make-believe; I've got to go be an adult now._

The slow dull thud of pain in his chest died down. Junior opened his eyes, and began walking away again.

"...So you're going to abandon me again." The cold certainty in Albedo's voice gave Junior pause. He stopped.

"You're going to leave me. Just turn and walk away from a part of your life." The madman took a shuddering breath. "We'd gotten so far, you know. You actually admitted to your crimes and I forgave you for what you did. We came so far along, and I'd thought you'd gotten around to admitting you're as much of a monster as I am. _My_ other half and no one else's. And now--" His voice broke into a high-pitched giggle. Junior cringed. "--you're going to walk away again! Like fourteen years ago, on Miltia! Ka

(_is a wheel_)

is a wheel, after all, we're bound to come full circle eventually. You leave!" Albedo gave another shuddering laugh. "As if my _love_ and my _faith_ were not enough! You always abandon me! Always, always! In the time of my greatest need--et tu, Rubedo? You throw me to the monsters! But wait--I hate you, don't I? What's this traitor emotion in my heart? How _dare_ I speak of CARING to the same coward who ABANDONS ME."

Junior turned around, meeting Albedo's hateful purple-eyed glare. Rage was stirring from the cold and weary ashes of his annoyance, and with it a horrible, black answer to his twin's bitter words. He set his jaw, watching Albedo stand there watching him, and fancied he could feel the rage boiling off his twin and volatilizing in the air between them. _Gaignun?_

_Yes, Junior?_ Cool, crisp, and professional again. Just what Junior expected.

_Hang on tight to the link. I'm gonna do something really stupid._

Muted shock rippled across their link. Whatever anger Gaignun had held before, it was replaced now by worry for his older brother. He didn't voice it. _Very well._

Albedo was staring at him now, silently. Junior didn't look up, instead striding over to the holding cell. He pressed a hand to the palm plate that would deactivate the field, feeling it heat beneath his fingers as it recognized his palm-print. A second later the field flickered out of existence, to the sound of Albedo laughing. Junior steeled himself, preparing to step into the cell.

He was interrupted by a clawed hand grabbing the lapels of his coat, hauling him up off his feet. Shortly enough he found himself eye to eye with his mad twin, scrabbling at his brother's wrists as Albedo continued to laugh softly. "How funny. So you're going to let me go anyway...?"

Junior smiled a little, stretching out psychic senses he'd left long unused. Albedo could kill him, but he didn't think that was going to happen. "Sorry, little brother," Junior managed through a clenched jaw. "Joke's on you."

He ripped open dormant link between them.


	7. The Deeper Blue

**Chapter 6: The Deeper Blue**  
_Second Miltian Capital, Vector Labs_

Awareness came at a price.

Data trickled through artificial synapses as electrons played crack-the-whip through nerves of steel and glass. For a moment her world turned upside-down, all blues and whites and impossible colors human eyes would never see. A little girl laughed, a mirror shattered, cold flooded through her and tingled in every extremity. _Awaken!_, a silent voice commanded. Awaken, abandon your dreams. Such comfort and warmth and the vision of a field of roses was hard to leave, and she tore herself away from it only slowly. Once more, that giggle, the stern command to awake

(_arise, o daughter of Zion!)_

and pull herself to her feet. Somewhere, the Rose was in danger. Somewhere this artificial gunslinger was being called onto assignment, her first pilgrimage to the Tower. (_The lady of shadows, he smirks with white teeth in the darkness as he lays out the tarot cards. Your fate, gunslinger?_) She jerked upward, hands raising to push the mask from her face even as the leaves of the pod unfolded around her. The soft dreams and warmth of humanity faded away, leaving behind them the machine with her nerves of steel. Her human forspecial melted into lines of code dictating she protect her creator, laid down by a hand that had more love in it than the android could ever bear in all her whole body.

Blue and white as an antique china plate, KOS-MOS jerked herself awake once more. Vector employees, instructed to be aware of the occasional freak awakening, the digital ghosts that could call the android out of slumber, scrambled away shrieking. She ignored them as she swung her legs out of the pod, hitting the ground as her sensors initialized. A frightened technician strayed into the range of her arm and she grabbed him, holding him immobile. "I require a vehicle."

He trembled and shook his head. "I can't do that, I c-can't—"

KOS-MOS tightened her hand fractionally. "I do not wish to break your shoulder. Fetch a vehicle," she deadpanned, waiting. She did not expect to be disobeyed for much longer.

The technician gulped and ran. His pulse beat hard in KOS-MOS's sensors with fear as he disappeared outside. The rest of the technicians had already emptied out of the room, leaving the android alone.

She looked around. Where was Shion? Not within range of KOS-MOS's delicate sensors, and the voice (_or Voice_) that had awakened her had not told her in which direction her creator had gone. She presumed it would be to the home that Shion had mentioned her family had in the mountains. KOS-MOS was not certain of its exact location, but there were only a very few settlements in those same mountains. The urgent pulse of danger in the back of her mind told her that she would not have time for a proper search pattern to find all those settlements, however.

_There is a 78.675 percent chance they will return to shut me down,_ a part of KOS-MOS reflected. Another muttered, _I don't have time for this._ She turned on one heel, striding over to the nearest UMN terminal. She knew what she would be searching for, already itching with some digital annoyance in her processors at the slowness of a world designed for organic minds. Something else within her beat with animal urgency, that ignored part of her desperate with anxiety for Shion. It was not (_it was never_) enough to impair her.

She stopped at the terminal, dismissing the active programs with a flick of her hands. Her fingers flew over the holographic keys, calling up search routines and UMN spider programs as she listened for the tech's return. One by one the queries flew out into the void; one by one they returned with nothing to show for their brief journeys. Dead—the connection was dead; Jin's home had only one UMN terminal (_the fool! _A part of KOS-MOS declared, irate, and was stifled.) and it was off-line; there was no way to call up a GPS trace on it if she couldn't even connect.

Another dozen queries threw themselves into the void as KOS-MOS typed; eleven null responses return. One spider-program dragged back the tag-end of a weather report in Shion's hand, correlated to her current GPS coordinates. Mountains—another flick of KOS-MOS's fingers as her clever sensors caught the sounds of returning human feet. _One_, she mused. One returning technician. Perhaps they had the sense not to toy with her after all.

A spray of pixels across the holographic HUD resolved into mountains, snow—a satellite display of the Uzuki home. From the timestamp, it was not the one KOS-MOS wanted most (_now! I need a picture of it NOW! Where is Shion? Where is my creator!_), but it gave her the information she needed.

She saved the coordinates, locking them into permanent memory. More footsteps in the hallway, quiet whispering. If they had decided to conspire against her, she reflected, they were doing a terrible job of it. "RCANNON," she muttered below her breath, more out of habit than need. The mass-transfer systems in her right arm shimmered blue, light leaking up toward her elbow as her hand reconfigured itself into a weapon.

KOS-MOS's remaining hand spidered over the console, erasing her queries from its active memory. That done, her tracks brushed away as neat and clean as sand in a desert, she turned toward the wall. More whispering from that direction, and heat signatures—yes, the techs were out there, presumably thinking they COULD shut her down.

If it were in her nature to do so, the android could have laughed.

Instead, she indulged herself in the smallest of smiles as she raised the RCANNON, calibrating its power output down. No need to blow a hole clean through all of the Second Division's fine new laboratory, just one wall. Light coalesced, before the weapon barked once, spitting plasma. The wall dissolved in a hail of ionized metal, the techs behind it freezing in shock like rabbits in a car's headlights.

"Have you prepared a vehicle?" KOS-MOS inquired mildly.

One—and then another, and another, like an avalanche of pebbles—nodded, until they were all quaking in affirmation.

"Good. I suggest you return to your duties. Good-bye."

She moved toward the new door she'd created, stepping among the Vector employees like a queen through her court. They scattered every which way, some fainting, some with growing damp spots in their uniform pants, but none trying to stop her.

Say true, she'd protect the Rose and her mother, no matter how many technicians she needed to frighten to get there.

_I'm coming, Shion._

_

* * *

Second Miltia, Outside Uzuki Family Home_

The coat was a fortuitous find. Weathertop could smell the peculiar scent on it from a hundred yards away, despite the cold. "Now we're getting a bit of luck, sai Top," he muttered to himself. "Real luck. Smells like that Uzuki bastard, if I don't miss my guess."

He kept walking, shoving through the snow that came up to his chest. _Old Gan spun this world from patchy cloth, _the Realian thought to himself, frowning at the snow. "It's a stupid old weaver whose hands are getting slow and his eyes too dull to notice his thread unravelling," Weathertop opined. The sepuchral silence of the darkening forest was getting a little too much for him. _What, old Weathertop worried about the monsters in the dark? He IS the monsters in the dark!_

Sadly, there were some forms of can toi that didn't respond so well to Weathertop's heavy-handed games. None to be found here, but he was beginning to think one or two of those sorts might be a welcome diversion from the snow. He kicked another hole in the snow, before stumbling into a clearing beneath a tree. Muttering, he turned, then sniffed at the breeze like a hound scenting a coon. "—Well, I'll be. There's a dead girl out here." His heart lifted. Los's hand had left a definite prize for him.

The Realian kicked his way through another ten feet of snow, using his arms to sweep it away before him when it came up to his chest. It spilled over the high tops of his boots, sloshing around his toes and increasing the peculiar wet misery of winter. He didn't have long to curse about the ill-favored situation, though, before breaking out into the clearing.

There were still thermal trails in the snow from where Uzuki and his friends had been cavorting about. Weathertop sniffed disdainfully at a partial track left by that big quiet cyborg. _Old tech. Man like him should be dead by now._ The world had moved on past the need for creatures like Ziggurat 8, leaving Weathertop's kind and the little can toi and anyone with enough intelligence and balls to pick over the corpse.

Speaking of corpses. "Well, well, my pretty little girl," the Realian crooned as he spotted the girl. A member of his own species, such as it were, though he was the only male of the breed. "Seems like you've run afoul of hard times."

He strode across the packed snow of the clearing, crouching down beside the corpse and twitching back the coat from her face. Genetic traces--her artificial blood, Uzuki's skin, and... "Roses. Roses growing from the shit. So Uzuki really did have her," he breathed, reaching to pick a twist of bright pink hair from the black fabric of the coat. "Huh. Guess I should've let Roger polish my boots after all." Indulging in a cultured laugh, he got to his feet again, stripping the coat back from the corpse.

She was mostly naked, a sight that made him hard just looking at her. Purple, bruised flesh, long since gone stiff from rigor mortis; blood tears from her eyes and blood smeared on the inside of her thighs. Beautiful. "Well, my sweet little tea rose, we may not have been properly introduced, but I've got an appointment to catch. On the other hand, a little fun won't hurt me—and you can't be hurt anymore, can you, my cotton-jilly."

He laid a hand on her cold flesh, judging her core temperature—not quite frozen yet. She wasn't quite to his preference—after all, she'd be raped many a time by his now-dead subordinates—as there was nothing better than a dead girl except a dead virgin, but she'd do. "Tide me over until I get to the Rose, all right," he muttered, undoing the fastenings on his jumpsuit. "Then we'll just see how deep the Guardian sunk his talons into her, won't we? See what that pretty little face looks like when it's been beaten and bruised."

Leaning down, he scooped the corpse up into his arms, straightening her so he could look into where her carved-out eyes had been. "May I have this dance, madame?" he asked, over-formal, then leaned in and kissed those frozen lips.

Fifteen minutes later, cleaned up, warmed up, and decked out in Jin's too-large jacket, Weathertop picked up the trail again. It was full-on dark now; colder, too, but his dead jilly had left him feeling sated and warm. Dead girls were nice like that, he reflected—didn't say much, didn't expect him to keep going until they were happy. Lay 'em and leave 'em.

The scent of joint-oil and Uzuki's queer aftershave was heavy on the air. Even the cold couldn't kill it to Weathertop's trained senses—as if he needed the scent, what with the road they'd made through the snow. Better going from here, the trees rustled. Smoother going, the snow squeaked underfoot. Now that he was smelling for it, Weathertop could catch the Rose's scent over Uzuki's—a little-girl scent, new cloth and sunshine, sweet and sensual.

Weathertop exhaled a long sigh and turned his cold gold eyes ahead. The moon had poked her curdy face around the edge of the clouds; the beaten trail ahead glowed white in the dark. He could catch no sound of a transmit generator up ahead, nor did the big dark bulk of Uzuki's home have any lights in its windows. As stupid as Roger had been, at least he had gotten one thing right.

* * *

_Fifth Sublevel, Kukai Foundation_

Waking up the second time wasn't as hard as the first, though every bit as cold and painful. It felt like he had a head full of rocks and a bellyful of knives, panic chewing at his nerves and desperately demanding he do something before he could even think yet. He rolled over—this time he could, can ya give me hallelujah?—bracing himself on the deck plates beneath his hands and pushing himself to a kneeling posture.

Red—out of the corner of one half-opened, hazy eye. Red, red hair, a boychild sprawled like he'd been shot mid-run and tumbled to the floor. Breathing, still—his hand fumbled to find a pulse at the child's neck, the other seeking his own second pulse at the left side of his chest. Normal. Now what? Pushed all the way to his feet, swaying like a drunken farmhand until balance reasserted itself. (_and?_)

The Rose—both hands seeking out his doubled pulse, his head gone down now as his fingers traced along his chest. Hands in his hair. The Rose—something was wrong with the Rose; he bit his tongue on a giggle that would

(_lullaby, and goodnight, let your blue eyes close tight_)

have awakened the sleeping boy, holding his mirth in a bubbling froth of blood. Rose-red. Had to find the Rose. Rose madder, crimson roses, a field of roses blown—

"But what do I do with the kid?" he begged of the silent voices. The distorted choir rose like a storm through dead trees, making him tighten his hands in his hair.

(_kill it_)

(_stab the dragon while it's sleeping, siegfried, and make off with its treasure_)

And

(_take him and run_)

"N-no, no no no no no...red red red, red blood, little red riding hood—the Crimson Prince, the Crimson Eye, the Crimson King—can't find the bird, the leaf, the gold, the dwarf—can't be Siegfried, you've got the story wrong—" he stammered, turning in place and bending nearly double as he clutched at his head.

(_a stone a rose_)

One hand unfolded—see the crimson numbers, sai? Six plus six plus seven is nineteen, if it do please ya, and see how he fisted his hand there to hide them. "—an unfound door—please don't make me, don't—I don't want to—" His voice attenuated into a low quiet moan as he trembled like a frightened child. "—with all the red in the world and the moon drowning in the blood sea and their eyes, their eyes and their bellies filled with little red spiders, want to help me count them? Chissit, chussit—"

(_nineteen_)

See how blindly he groped at the air, before whipping around, lunging at the child. "All right, all right! ALL RIGHT. I'll DO it!"

* * *

The last shriek knocked Junior out of his sleep, the boy gunslinger not yet ready to come to his senses. He stretched, only to find a hand around his throat and a pair of mad purple eyes staring into his. "Alb—" he got out, fumbling blindly for his guns. 

"Hush little baby—don't you cry," the madman hissed between his teeth. Junior kicked desperately as he once again found himself snatched off his feet. "Daddy's gonna sing you a lullaby—"

/ Albedo, I swear to God if you— /

"God's DEAD, Rubedo, and we killed him! HALLELUJAH!"

Junior shrieked in terrified rage as he saw the floor rushing up to meet his head. The last thing his ears caught was a sickening crack like a melon being split with an axe, and then nothing once more.

* * *

Albedo dropped his twin's limp body like so much potatoes, stumbling back. "Not dead, no," he mumbled. "Can ya give me hallelujah, Gan's not dead, the world moves on but the King's still here—hasn't left the building yet." 

He stopped, then darted back to Junior's side to finger that red hair like a girl with a new doll. "One lump or two for our tea, Rubedo?" he sing-songed. "—Three, and make it a concussion. We do live in extravagant times." He snagged his clawed fingers in the boy's collar, before tossing him over one shoulder.

"So I guess it's take the kid and run," he babbled nervously. There was something anticipatory to the nervousness, almost like he wanted to get caught. The sweet thrill of doing the forbidden. "...well, let's go, let's go, let's get gone and make TRACKS, if that's the case—if it must be done, 'tis best to do it speedily—ah—"

Simeon wasn't far off. Though its light was nothing like the blood-hot pulse of the distant Rose, he'd know the Anima Relic anywhere. The cell door was unlocked but it would take too long, too long—he'd been out, what, fifteen minutes? Ten? The world moved on so much quicker than he liked—and the old familiar tug of more power than he could handle was like a sandalwood grip in his hand, polished and deadly and warm. He didn't think; he reached out

(_do you come here for a serious purpose, boy?_)

and put his fingers around reality's grip and pulled the trigger.

(_I choose David, teacher_)

Albedo stepped out from the between-space, shaking off the thrill of doing the forbidden. His boy-shaped burden moaned quietly, only to hush as the madman hissed through his teeth. "_Quiet_, Rubedo, they'll HEAR us."

But no one did, despite Albedo's paranoid fears. He looked to his left, then his right, before strolling across the hangar-bay floor as if he owned the place. Simeon was locked down tight in one corner of the bay, but the big ES began to stir as its pilot approached. Albedo couldn't help the nervous smile on his face, or the low purr in his throat.

"Hello, girl. Looks like you and me are going for a ride."


	8. Interlude

**Interlude**  
_Office of the Director_, Dämmerung

It was not often that Wilhelm took it upon himself to rest. The can calah were old, as old as the _Prim_, as old as the Tower, the very first children old Gan had breathed life into. As the worlds moved on so did they, those who some called angels, doing Gan's work as best they understood it until their bodies wore out, and then ka's wheel would turn them around into new flesh to begin anew. They didn't tire often, nor did they get much chance to rest.

Most of them were tolerant of this. As the worlds moved on, so _had_ they, who had once been as thick in Gan's world as stars in the night sky, and now were left only in pitiful handfuls here and there. Say sorry, but there's no heavenly choir here any longer--they've gone the way of unicorns and dragons. It's all trios now, or duets, or lately the sad voice singing solo out in the wilderness.

If it hadn't been for Yeshua, Wilhelm would've counted himself in that last category.

He _missed_ it, did Wilhelm, as he sat at his desk with his fingers against his temples. Wagner's grim chords filled his office--Wagner's music, better than it sounded.

He missed having his brothers and sisters so close by he could hear them. Wagner--ha! Wagner, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, a hundred thousand other composers decomposing on Lost Jerusalem, with even the can calah forgetful of where their bones were; no matter how reverenced they were, all Wilhelm used them for was to fill the silence, as he did now.

The Tower was shaking loose of its foundations. He felt it in his bones and in his bowels; he'd known the Breakers had been at work for many and many a year. He'd set his watch and warrant (and broken Compass) on Yeshua and Nephilim knowing as well, though he'd been too stubborn to inquire of them. They'd gone their own way a long time ago, Wilhelm's partner and the speaking demon he was infatuated with. They would put aside their differences and come to him, or there would be no accord between them at all, and that was that.

Strings vied with and lost a shrieking battle to the woodwinds as Wilhelm rubbed at his temples. He opened his eyes at length, looking sidelong at the Compass. Its gears still pin-wheeled free of resistance and reason, utterly meaningless in their motion. The letters of the High Speech blazoned along their length went from gibberish to nonsense and back again: _DRINK NOZZ-O-LA, _said one. _SEE THE TURTLE OF ENORMOUS GIRTH, _said another, and _BEWARE THE WALKIN DUDE_.

Wilhelm closed his eyes and turned his head away. They had known, he and Yeshua, that there had been forces tearing at the Tower for a long, long time. It was the way of Gan's world--the White created and guarded, the Crimson King destroyed what had been made. It had been that way since before he and Yeshua had set out from In-World to take this far-flung splinter of it under their wings. But when the inhabitants had begun to go the way of the Old People of In-World, they had disagreed about how to guard their charges--

He dug his fingers into his corn-silk hair, shaking his head slowly. Moping was a luxury he couldn't afford, not with a meeting with his servants in the offing. The final passage of the _Neiblüngslied _was drawing to its inevitable conclusion, the timing impeccable as ever. Now wasn't the time to dwell in the past. Wilhelm composed himself, even as an ill feeling sent shivers down his spine.

_Chary-ka._ Whatever his Testaments were bringing him would be more bad news. Ka had sucked them all in beyond even their ability to alter its turning--wicked old ka, with its implacable hunger for all their lives. He'd let it sweep him along this far, but he'd built too much for it to steal it all from him in the last catastrophic fall of the Tower.

Not now. Not now.

They began to arrive as the last notes died away.

---

The Testaments appeared singly with respect to age and seniority--the Black, then the Red, then the Blue. Ill colors to be serving under one of the White's defenders; Wilhelm had been taking stupid risks and he cursed himself for meddling even as he kept up his mask of absolute calm. Signs and symbols were _important_, forspecial, nothing to be trifled with.

His sickly rainbow of servants arranged themselves around the front of his desk. He nodded to each in turn, needing no names to greet them. They returned the gesture soberly, but kept to their silence. If the master had called them all together, it couldn't mean anything good.

"Take off your masks."

No need, now, to stand on ceremony. Wilhelm could feel the ripple of muted shock from the Blue and the Red, the smug amusement from Black. (He, after all, had made a point of never wearing the mask.) They didn't argue (_knew better than to argue_) but removed their plague masks after a moment's hesitation, meeting their master face to face for the first time in a long time.

Wilhelm studied them, this strange ka-tet of his. They weren't chance-chosen; unlike a certain gunslinger he'd had the leisure to pick those most suited to his tasks, ka be damned. It hadn't occurred to him to wonder if that was a mistake--not until now. These hand-picked men looked uneasy now, despite all their power. There were questions Wilhelm wished he didn't have the answers to staring back at him from their blank faces. Cannibals, murderers, traitors...

"Master Wilhelm?" the Red (_the traitor_) inquired, hesitantly. "Is something the matter?"

If can calah hadn't been creatures of preternatural patience, Wilhelm might have struck his Testament down for that stupid question where he stood. Instead, he adopted the affable half-smile that told them he was coddling their mortal ineptitude again. Blue, the cannibal, shrunk back from that smile; Red winced. Black smiled right back, his mind gone queer from spending too long in places men didn't belong.

"I believe," Wilhelm said with a neutrality he didn't feel. "That I do not need to explain the current situation to any of you. You all felt the disturbance; you know well what it means, along with," he passed a hand over the worthless Compass, setting the wheels gyrating aimlessly once more, "this. We are, my Testaments, flying blind."

Eyes widened. A frown etched itself even on the Black's face.

"Then--what are we to do?" The Red, again. Curse the man. You could still be a rocket scientist and be a complete idiot; Kevin Winnicot was an excellent example of this.

Wilhelm waited.

"Who do we kill?" the Blue said, expectantly. He was still growing into his powers, like a kid with a new toy.

Wilhelm still waited.

Finally, he got the response he wanted:

"I'll take the Guardian." The Black's voice was little more than a breathy whisper from disuse.

"Yes--I believe...you came the closest to _him_ in life; you would have the best idea of where his terminal will go from here. You will be able to handle the Guardian's unstable moods, yes...?"

The Black shrugged, once. "His Beam that snapped. I've seen what happened to the others."

(_bird and bear and hare and fish_)

Wilhelm raised his hand, a gesture they all knew as dismissal. Black didn't bother with a goodbye--he _went_, stepping out and out of view. The director returned his attention to Blue and Red, who stood by nervously.

"I believe it best that the girl and the Realian be protected during this delicate time. The android has developed feelings for both of them, has she not? And will protect them both if they are threatened?" Wilhelm's eyes lingered a long moment on the Red, who opened his mouth and shut it again, then reconsidered, and managed only to look like a winded trout.

"...I...if you could call them 'feelings', yes, she'll protect both of them." He only just restrained himself from fidgeting.

Wilhelm raised his hand to cast the Red out into the dark. "Please see to it that this is the case. To lose them now would not be acceptable."

"Yes, Master Wilhelm."

And then there was one. "So, should I stay around and guard the home front? Or--what about that Yuriev guy? Seems like his kids are running the show now." Without the other Testaments around, the Blue had relaxed into himself. Wilhelm wasn't sure he liked it, but it was more enthusiasm and forward-thinking than the others had shown.

"Yuriev will be attended to in time. He will be quiet a while longer before troubling us." The director made a tent of his fingers on the desk, watching his remaining Testament. "You will look in the other direction--you do have connections with the U-TIC organization, yes?"

"Who doesn't?" The Blue put up his hands to stop the argument before it could begin. "I'll go take a look-see. They're probably still rebuilding, just like everyone else. Will he--" The Testament nodded toward where the Black had been standing, leaving the question open.

A blow to his pride, was it? Wilhelm suppressed both a smile and unworthy amusement. "You did well to watch the Guardian while you did," he soothed. "But things have become more urgent, and the situation requires a different touch." He raised his hand once more. "Will there be anything else?"

"Ha." The Blue Testament snorted, and was gone like his fellows.

---

Wilhelm leaned back in his chair as his office emptied once more. Once more he looked at the Compass, the old ploy for reassurance. It had begun spinning backwards in the time since he'd last looked away, slow and meaningless as ever. _I did my best,_ he thought at it, irritably. _What more do you want?_

The stubborn artifact seemed to have heard him, for the wheels stopped for a moment. Wilhelm noted something new inching its way through the letters of the High Speech that encircled the Compass--a blot of bright red like a blood clot moving through a vein. He nurtured a seed of hope, leaning in close to see what this new development might be.

The ugly little blot crept its slow way up around the inner wheel, tugging a short phrase behind it like a plane with a banner. Wilhelm's eyes narrowed as it came closer, the letters resolving themselves into sensible words. The blot itself was a little red eye.

_ALL HAIL THE CRIMSON KING!_ they said.

_ALL HAIL!_

The Compass went crashing to the floor, shattering into so many useless pieces. Wilhelm stood, panting, and brushed the sleeve of his coat by habit. A few seconds passed. He straightened and drew in a breath to cool his rage, before tapping a button on the desk. "Please send one of the janitorial teams to my office. I'm afraid I've made a slight mess."

"Certainly, director." The voice on the other end hesitated. "Will there be anything else?" it said, meaning _Are you all right?_

"Yes. Please open a channel to the Kukai Foundation. I would like to speak to Gaignun Kukai immediately."


	9. Perchance to Dream

**Chapter 7: Perchance to Dream**  
_Uzuki family home, Second Miltia_

_"JIN!"_

He didn't think, he moved.

The old katana flew from its sheath in a single liquid motion. Half-step, turn--he intercepted the charging shadow with the first third of the blade, feeling it cut deep and clean through muscle and organ to connect with bone. Drew back, twisting his wrist to disengage, an expert flick of the hand to send blood pattering to the floor at his side. His opponent hadn't even tried to dodge.

Was this all that had been waiting for him? chaos spoke from behind him, as Jin turned aside a moment to wipe the blood from his blade: "Jin--look."

There was an unexpected hitch in the youth's voice that drew the swordsman up short. He raised his head, brushing back his hair with a free hand. He didn't need chaos's shaking hand pointed past his shoulder to tell him where his victim lay; the spreading crimson puddle did that well enough. He didn't need a glimpse of a yellow-clad shoulder and mussed brown hair to identify who it was, or why _it had been so easy to kill him--_

"Allen!"

Shion came skidding around the corner at a run, grasping at the far wall to catch her balance. "Al--"

Jin didn't need Shion's expression to tell him what she saw: her brother and chaos behind him, both spattered in blood; Allen on the floor, neatly butterflied and already quite dead. It was a surprise to Jin that she didn't faint on the spot, or start screaming at him.

He took his hand from the hilt of his sword.

"What did you do to him," Shion said in a voice like ice.

"I--"

"WHAT DID YOU DO TO HIM?!" Her calm dissipated into a shriek. Faster than Jin could respond she vaulted the space between them, hands going for his eyes and his throat. This was not sibling rivalry; it was attempted fratricide and Jin very nearly drew his sword once more. Sense got the better of him, though; he grabbed her wrists instead, immobilizing her as if they were eight and twenty-one again and fighting over a trifle.

She was much stronger than he remembered her being and shoved against his hands with a shriek of indignation. "Shion, listen to me--!" It was only by good fortune he twisted away just as she got a knee up, taking a blow to the hip instead of the crotch. Undaunted she went for his eyes again, thrashing like an animal in a trap and shrieking all the while. chaos was saying something but Jin would be damned if he could pick it out from all of Shion's screaming.

"Listen to you! LISTEN TO YOU! You killed Allen, you heartless, selfish--" She bent her own wrist nearly double to get at him. Unwilling to hurt her, Jin let go and immediately regretted it as her nails found purchase in his throat. He took back the decision not to injure her and aimed an elbow for her midsection.

The blow would have put her out of the fight had not chaos's hands come to rest on his shoulder and Shion's wrist. "I said _stop it_," the youth barked.

It was more emotion than Jin had ever heard him use. He drew back in an instant, resigned instead to prying Shion's hand off his neck. chaos squeezed her wrist once--Jin swore he could hear bones creaking--and she let go, pulling her hand back.

A moment passed.

chaos let go of Shion's arm and Jin's shoulder; the younger Uzuki immediately fell to her knees next to Allen's body. She pulled his head into her lap, heedless of the smears of crimson it left on her pants--and then began to cry, in harsh wracking sobs that shook her entire body. Jin didn't bother to get any closer to her, torn between fraternal pity and self-preservation. Who knew what turn her mood would take next.

He fisted his hand, still feeling the slick slide of sharpened steel through meat and bone. _Like cubing a steak for stew_, the old man had once told him. _Skinning an animal, cutting a joint of meat, killing a man, Uzuki, it all _feels _the same except that the man will keep coming for you until he realizes he's dead. _Allen hadn't gotten very far. Jin supposed the engineer had always had a good sense of reality, even dying.

_I really did kill him._ It wasn't as if he hadn't killed men before. It wasn't as if he hadn't presided over this kind of butchery. Never without meaning to, though--and damn it, even if he hadn't been a friend and Jin didn't much like the way he'd looked at Shion, Allen was a familiar presence. He passed a hand over his face, batting his bangs aside and smearing angry crimson stripes across his cheek.

He needed a shower. Needed to get the blood off. Suspected that no matter how hard he scrubbed he couldn't erase the feeling of the hitch and snap of the sword cleaving a human body. God! His sister out of commission, her subordinate dead, and he was obsessing over a ghost of a feeling.

Assured that chaos had control of the situation, Jin turned to put his back to the grisly scene and scrubbed the sleeve of his robe across his face. It did little for the mask of gore coating him from ear to ear. The hallway was empty, and dark, back the way they'd come from. Quiet enough, too, that Shion's sobbing and chaos's murmured reassurance seemed too loud.

And where was the other member of their absurd search party? Jin's mind caught on Ziggy's absence, dragging his thoughts to a screeching halt. He thought immediately to ask chaos about it, then threw that away; Shion was headed toward total collapse and he didn't like the idea of having to drag her out into the snow if she melted down and they needed to run for it. No, no interrupting chaos. He'd find out himself.

Tucking bangs going stiff with dried blood behind an ear, Jin started back down the hall as quickly as he dared. No sign of the cyborg in the sitting room, but he'd expected that--the racket would have brought Ziggy in at a run, if he were in the house. That put him outside, _far_ outside or distracted with something else if he hadn't heard what had just happened. Jin frowned, rested a hand on the door to the garden.

Inspecting the generator? Or the power conduits? No, he was smarter than that; anything that had taken both of them down was outside a bodyguard's power to fix. The swordsman pushed open the door and stepped out. It fell closed behind him, shutting out the sounds of his sister's incessant weeping.

The snow was coming down again, thick and hard. Jin's frozen garden was little more than a mass of sad lumps and ice sculptures among the growing drifts. He picked his way toward the front of the house, nearly dropping himself on his ass when he found the pond the hard way. He staggered once and righted himself with the help of the nearest tree. It proved frozen through, cracking to the heartwood but saving him from a fall.

His hand stung like he'd burned it. Wrapping cold-clumsy fingers around the hilt of his sword, he slid it from its sheath and used it as an inelegant crutch until he was off the damned pond. From then on he was more careful about his steps, sheltering in the lee of the house and making the laborious trek around to the front of it. It was _cold_, colder than he'd ever imagined, cold that was the worse for the empty silence all around him. The night swallowed up the rasping sounds of Jin's breath and the creak of the snow underfoot. Snowflakes dotted his hair and shoulders in a fine unmelted layer. He made the corner of the house with lungs burning from the cold and stopped there to catch his breath.

Something groaned--creaked--snapped. Silence. Then again--a long, low groan that became a shrill creak, then a brittle snap.

Jin bolted alert, breath coming faster. A moment and a handy drainspout saw him up onto the roof, which proved no less slippery than the ground. He had to crouch to keep his balance as he stared wide-eyed into the dark. Everything more than a yard from the roof's edge was lost to the snow and the night. Whatever was out there felt just a little beyond his seeing, close enough to be real but too far for him to make any shapes out.

Groan. Creak. **SNAP.**

This time as the swordsman strained to hear he could pick out the sound of breath soughing in and out of monstrous lungs. Then, even further out than the breathing beast, there was another groan-creak-snap and the squeak of compressed snow. Jin flattened himself to the roof, thumbing the old katana from its sheath until an inch of steel showed. No discernible sounds came from the house beneath him, which was the worse sign.

Another groan, this time followed by a great chaotic rustling of brush. Bending trees added a tortured note to the noise. One bent too far, cracked all the way up its length, and fell--close enough that Jin could feel the breeze against his face. A frost-rimed leaf drifted to the snow near his hand.

Silence reigned.

Then a sound like a bellows being pumped, followed by a wheezing sigh. A hot and fetid breeze swirled around him, melting the snow to rain and making him gag. There was a sticky _pop_ close by as a little red dot swam out of the dark. Jin stared at it uncomprehending. Another _pop_, another dot. Another, and another. It was only when one of the dots rolled to focus on the swordsman that he realized what he was staring at--

Or more precisely, what was staring at him.

* * *

Up on a snowy knoll outside the house, Weathertop had the perfect vantage to listen in on the screaming. He nearly pissed himself laughing as he watched Ridgeley's bodylight wink out; if sai Uzuki was that quick on the draw, maybe he didn't even need to bother doing for his friends before taking the Rose. Nice as the thought was, though, he imagined the mistake was a one-off and that sobered him up. Not that Weathertop was afraid; far from it, he told himself. He just wasn't stupid, either.

No, Weathertop had no intention of barging down there to deal with the occupants of the house. Besides, if he stalled long enough the cousins Roger and his friends had let loose, the wormy-furred _can-toi tak_ with their hundred eyes, would take care of the problem for him. But that wouldn't be any fun, would it, and the cousins seldom left an intact corpse behind once they were done with it. Better to suss out his chances to getting himself to the Rose and getting away with her before the house and everything in it got flattened. With that thought he stood up, squinting at the far-distant house and taking a good careful inventory of its inhabitants. Five bodies, one rapidly cooling, which left four. The Realian cocked his head, straining more than just his sight to glean the identities of those remaining four. Uzuki, it looked like--he was heading away from the scene of the kill--and the Rose (small and so bright and pure Weathertop could taste her), Uzuki's sister and the can calah.

All he'd gotten from his worthless subordinates pointed at there being six people up in the house. Which meant the big cyborg they had guarding the Rose wasn't with them, and nowhere close enough to the house Weathertop where would notice him. Too focused on the Rose, he'd been, and let one of them get out of his sight. It didn't mean a damn thing either if Ziggurat had found something else to occupy his attentions, but Weathertop didn't think a big fellow like him would be out clumping around trying to fix the sabotaged generators. "Well shit," he said, amiably enough. "Looks like we got ourselves a real problem here, sai Top."

He rucked the coat up about his shoulders, mobile lips turned downward in a frown. "Now what to do?" Turning, he swept the forest behind him with a cold, gold gaze, looking intently for signs of life. Nothing definite there either, beyond a distant squeak stressed snow and a maddening bob of movement just out of the corner of one eye. It disappeared when he turned to follow it, and IR was no help either--it was cold enough that everything just looked black, with trees a little less black than the rest and the snow a little more. He swore beneath his breath again, lips wrinkled back from his teeth in a silent snarl.

"Old bastard's more stealthy than he's got any right to be."

Still, there was only one of him, and like any good old dog, he could be distracted long enough to be put down. Weathertop's hand drifted to the piece he was carrying (a little tin-scrap piece of shit that would have made a serious gunslinger laugh himself sick--but it would get the job done, that's what mattered, say thank ya), fingers closing around the grip before jerking themselves away. "No, no, let's not go there quite yet. You come out carrying and he'll shoot first and ask questions of your bits," he remanded himself; stuffed the hand in a pocket.

Another squeak of snow close by made him start alert, staring in that direction and still seeing nothing. "Los damn it, I'm going batty." If it weren't for the perfect picture he had of the distant house, still lingering in memory for easy perusal, he'd have thought it was his sensors. He glanced sidelong, refreshing that picture in his mind. Uzuki had gone to the roof, and--there, god, there, they'd left the Rose alone in her own _room_ in their hurry to moan and wail over Ridgeley's corpse. Teeth top-and-bottom nearly met in the flesh of his lip as he bit down, hard, resisting the urge to whimper at just how perfect it was. Well, that made his mind up for him, now didn't it. If they weren't going to bother keeping an eye on her, and her pet cyborg was out here playing hide-and-go-seek in the snow with him--how _could_ he resist? How could he?

He eased a foot down the slope, giving the forest another look--then the other, shifting his weight and inching sidelong for a foot or two. Nothing moved in the minute that took him. "Hehh. Guess I must be getting daft in my old age. Poor old Top, his mind's going, going--" Almost as an afterthought, he hooked a thumb beneath the collar of the coat, peeling it off and tossing it away. "--gone! And I'm _out_ of here!"

Making the bottom of the hill in two long strides, he took off in a sprint toward the house.

* * *

Bitter experience had taught Ziggurat 8 that not trusting in his own instincts led to trouble. The half-heard conversation or hint of footsteps behind you, the human shadow glimpsed fleetingly through smoke or twilight, a partial footprint captured in blood or grime--the good officer ignored these at his peril. He'd learned as much in the past, overlooking signs that might have averted disaster if only he could have _seen..._ Experience filled in where memory often couldn't with a slow crawl beneath the skin, an urge to move in a man not usually restless. So out he went into the snow again on a hunch, not trusting (with the brittle cynicism of the often-disappointed) that things would be all right in the house, but trusting less that whatever had disabled the generators would leave it at that.

On this experience was ill help, though--following these urges to their logical conclusion just as often left the old cyborg in a different sort of trouble altogether than had he ignored them; just another restatement of the damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't theme that had plagued him since birth. But it was anathema to freeze when the situation demanded action--you had to do something. Find a clue. Demand a name from the shadow. As if solving this next mystery would set to right everything that had gone wrong in

(_jan sauer's_)

his life.

He stopped in place, lifting a foot (strange, even after all these years, to think of the metal as _his_, a part of _him; _better not to think about it at all) to shake the accumulation of snow from it; a pretext for pausing long enough to scan the barren landscape around him. Snow, everywhere snow, a thick white blanket such as Ziggy had never seen, in all his century and a half; and more coming down with every second now that night had come on. Given the option of cheap, effective climate control, few were the planetary governments in the local cluster who hadn't chosen to abolish deep winter entirely. Long experience on a handful of tropical worlds (and Lost Jerusalem before them) said that humans didn't need more than a shortening of daylight hours to function as if they had winter; snow was outmoded and unnecessary. No reason not to do away from it.

So much for that.

The cyborg snorted at the thought; the landscape was dead whatever way he looked at it, no indication of what he'd thought he'd seen or heard following them back to the house. One more sweep on a wider circuit all the way around the house, one that should take in the generators, and then he'd return. He set his foot down and started toward the next line of trees, reaching out a hand to brush a frozen branch out of his path--

Something shrieked behind him.

_The house! _It had been back the way he'd come from; Ziggy whipped around with a speed his size belied, taking three great strides that way. He was too far away, his enhanced hearing not nearly sharp enough to pick out who it had been, but the direction and the species of the owner (human) had been clear. So was the mortality. Men didn't scream that way except when they were dying; he had heard enough death-cries in his time to know.

(_a nightmare of recollection: sharon and joaquin kneeling before their murderer, accepting death with smiles, but the other victims had not always been so complacent; and the screaming, screaming, resounding off the inside walls of a dead man's _mind--)

Something flashed past him out of the corner of his vision, a ghost in the wasteland of snow and wintering trees. He snapped his head toward the blur, sensors alive, circuits etching data on the backs of his retinas. Telemetry, distance to, IR signature (_much warmer than their surroundings_), probable mass (_a child, a Realian, here?)_, estimated velocity--even as the data poured past he'd already lurched into a run, powering back through snowdrifts when his own back-trail wasn't a straight enough line to the distant house. The wind rushing past his ears distorted but didn't deaden the sound as the distant figure yelled something; "--gone!" was the only word he heard clearly, but it was enough to confirm the identity of the speaker as sentient.

An ambush. They'd been set up, and someone had already paid for his inattention.


End file.
